Why Watch? Holy shit.

This short film from Benjamin Howdeshell is the kind of thing that launches careers. It’s fantastic. The first sequence sells the entire film with a stark, violent visual and a killer sound design to inflate its impact. Then, even when the story flat, it’s because a twist or cool idea is about to slap you in the face. It’s first rate work all around.

Yes, zombies have been done to death, but this flick injects the action of a hostage thriller into the mix to create something that focuses on the men in dark suits responsible for the outbreak and less on brain-hungry hordes. That doesn’t mean there’s no neck biting though. There’s definitely some of that, and it’s work that breathes new life into an old corpse.

This is a stellar film featuring effects done by the same team that did Wanted, and it boasts a strong new directing talent making one hell of a bloody mark in the movie world.

What will it cost? Only 9 minutes.

Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films.

Hey, who says there are no original ideas in Hollywood? Well, us actually, whenever we have to write about the next 80s-era television show getting a big screen reboot that no one on God’s green earth could possibly want to flash in front of their eyeballs on a giant cinema screen. But this year, there were at least five films that sprung from original ideas that were solid enough to get the ol’ Best Original Screenplay nod. Really, at least five. There’s five in this category! There could be more, but I’m too busy thinking about the Valley Girl reboot to come up with any of them right now.

Giggles and bad jokes aside, this year’s Oscar race for Best Original Screenplay is actually pretty, well, original. We’ve got an awards season frontrunner, a raunchy lady-centric comedy (how often do you hear “raunchy” when it comes to the Academy Awards? Not often, that’s how often), a Sundance flick about the financial crisis, a foreign film getting all sorts of (well-deserved) praise, and the latest from one of the Academy’s most nominated filmmakers. This category is truly one hell of mixed bag.

What’s perhaps most interesting about this race is that it four of its nominations belong to newcomers to the Oscars, while its fifth nominee is Woody Allen, who has received more nominees in this category (15) than any other screenwriter in the history of the awards. But does that little bit of trivia spell “winner”? Read on for the nominations and my predicted winner in red…

The Artist, Michel Hazanvicius

Why He Was Nominated

This awards season is all about The Artist, an “unexpected” darling. Why the quotes? Well, Hollywood loves Hollywood, and they love stuff about Hollywood. What’s more Hollywood than a throwback black-and-white silent movie that is about black-and-white silent movies? The Artist is a fresh little romp, an easy pick, and Hollywood have rioted if it didn’t show up on this list.

Why He Might Win

Hazanvicius and The Artist have, arguably, the most heat this awards season. The film – and its director, stars, editors, and more (the film has been nominated for a total ten Oscars this year) – is the darling of the year, at least when it comes to those who vote on these things. Hazanvicius’ script is frothy and surprisingly detailed, charming and able to make the old fogies that make up the Academy remember why they love movies.

Why He Might Not Win

Perhaps the biggest strike against The Artist is that, as it’s a silent film, the assumption might be that the script is thin. That’s stupid, but it needs to be mentioned. But there’s another strike against the film that few people seem to be voicing: Hazanvicius’ previous films are spy spoof flicks – quite well-done spy spoof flicks, it must be said, but spoofs nonetheless. To me, The Artist has an authenticity problem – it’s frisky and fun and well-crafted, but Hazanvicius’ background gives me pause. Is The Artist just another well-made spoof? I can’t help but wonder.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Bridesmaids, Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig

Why They Were Nominated

Because the Academy might finally be loosening up? Because perhaps the Academy’s younger members staged a coup? Because even they couldn’t deny how fresh, funny, and true Mumolo and Wiig’s script was?

Why They Might Win

I hate to do this to Bridesmaids (a film I love) and Mumolo and Wiig (two talents I love), but we all know Bridesmaids is not going to squeak out a win. It is simply too fresh, funny, and true for the Academy. And I bet at least fifty percent of the voters positively freaked out during that bathroom scene. If the film does win, though, I’ll eat a shoe – and happily.

Why They Might Not Win

We all know by know that the vast majority if Academy voters are older white dudes – Bridesmaids isn’t a film for them. It’s a film about modern women on the cusp of fully realizing who they are – until they slide back into infantile habits. It’s also about poop (sadly).

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Margin Call, J.C. Chandor

Why He Was Nominated

Chandor’s film gobbled up all the awards season love that other films from last year’s Sundance should have (hello, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Take Shelter). Why? Because it’s “of the moment” and about problems that everyone can sort of identify with and because it’s packed with a star-studded cast. Chandor’s script accomplishes its major aim exceedingly well – it distills down complicated financial issues into language most people can understand. He also crafted a murderer’s row of characters without muddling them up into each other.

Why He Might Win

Buzzy topic, dazzling cast, scads of awards already under his belt, smart writing, Chandor might just shock us all and pull this one out. This is the dark horse bet in this race.

Why He Might Not Win

It’s still a dark horse. Chandor’s film was not a major release and there’s a big possibility that many voters haven’t seen it already, either thinking it was too dense (finance! scary!) or too dumb (a debut film that played at Sundance, please!). Even without an Oscar, Chandor should be proud he earned this nomination.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Why He Was Nominated

It’s Woody Allen’s biggest hit in years, and the Academy loves throwing the nominations at the filmmaker. It’s the increasingly rare Allen flick that pleases both critic and audiences, and it’s got a fun and frisky plot to boot. Also, uh, it’s Woody Allen.

Why He Might Win

Allen’s film was the delight of the year, a moneymaker and crowd-pleaser, but one that also comes with a script that has the most pay-off for book nerds, art fans, and history wonks. It’s Academy bait, but the rare kind that everyone can enjoy. Also, Academy members probably watched this with their grandkids.

Why He Might Not Win

Even though Allen has gotten more nominations than any other screenwriter in Academy history, his odds aren’t so hot. Two wins out of fifteen nominations? Oof. There’s also that little beast called The Artist, Allen’s biggest competition by far, and one that he should be afraid of.

Previous Nominations: 15

Previous Wins: 2

A Separation, Asghar Farhadi

Why He Was Nominated

By the grace of God? Seriously, Farhadi’s film is one of the very best of the year, but it’s nomination for Best Foreign Language Film could have very well hurt it when it came to other categories. Too often solid foreign flicks are a) ignored or b) tossed into the Foreign Language category to duke it out with other foreign films, simply because Academy voters still seem to think that “foreign” is a genre. Paired with Bridesmaids, and Farhadi’s nomination must might signal a real paradigm shift in the Academy.

Why They Might Win

Because Farhadi’s script is a seamless amalgamation of family drama, culture study, and court-room brawler. The script is so perfectly penned, so meticulously constructed, it’s no surprise that the film is earning praise and nominations. It’s good – that’s why.

Why They Might Not Win

While Farhadi’s film is arguably the Foreign Language Film with the most heat on it, that doesn’t mean much even in the Best Foreign Language Film race, which frequently churns out winners that make you go “huh?” That cred means even less in a completely separate category.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Complete Academy Awards Coverage

Each year, there’s a certain group of people who bemoan the Oscars (and pretty much every other organization’s awards) for being nothing but a popularity contest. They’re right, of course, but the Oscars also helps set the standard for quality films… at least quality films from those who are popular in the industry.

However, when it comes to the Academy Award for Best Actor, it’s probably the biggest popularity contest out there (only to be matched by the battle for the Best Actress Oscar, of course). It’s not just about who gave the most solid performance in a motion picture, but also who schmoozes the best at parties and on the red carpet. These awards are also often sewn up early and are less unpredictable than the lower profile awards for Costume Design and Sound Editing (Jane Eyre and Transformers represent, yo!).

Still, as one of the “big six” awards, Best Actor is an important one. A nomination alone can breathe new life into a career. Just look at what it did for John Travolta in the mid-90s. Likewise, winning an award can help make you a superstar, like it did for Nicolas Cage around the same time. (Of course, now the Academy claims no responsibility for Cage’s more recent career choices.)

In any respect, this year’s race for Best Actor presents a slate of great performances from newcomers and veterans alike, even if it’ll all be a popularity contest in the end.

Read on for the nominations and my predicted winner in red…

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

Why He Was Nominated

Although the accolades for Bichir seemed to come out of nowhere this year, they are very well deserved. In A Better Life, Bichir plays Carlos Galindo, an illegal immigrant struggling to give his son a good life. Chasing the American dream, Carlos sinks all his money into a truck that will allow him to get more work. When that truck is stolen, he tries to recover it with his son, simultaneously finding a bond with his child and exposing both of them to greater dangers.

A small movie that, for the most part, flew under the radar in 2011, A Better Life was a piece that allowed Bichir to give a deep performance. However, it wasn’t made simply to show the world that Bichir could act. He offered leveled empathy to a character that could have easily become a pawn in a political statement, and the film was much more than that.

Why He Might Win

There’s no denying that the Academy responds to political messages in their films. And while recent months have focused on different social issues in the American political realm, the subject of illegal immigration is still a hot topic. Like the other nominees, Bichir’s performance is extremely powerful, but he has the added advantage of allowing the voters to make a political statement as well as reward fantastic acting.

Why He Might Not Win

Even though Bichir has been an actor for many years, first in Mexico and later breaking into Hollywood films in the early 2000s, he’s a newcomer to the awards circuit. His portrayal of Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh’s Che got a modicum of positive buzz, but to most moviegoers, he’s the new kid on the block. Add to the fact that few people actually saw A Better Life, and he’s got an uphill battle towards Oscar gold.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

George Clooney, The Descendants

Why He Was Nominated

The easy answer to this question is: “Because he’s George Clooney.” Similar to his contemporaries like Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, Clooney has been showing up each year in an award bait movie for the better part of a decade. It worked two years ago with Up in the Air and four years ago with Michael Clayton (though not so much with The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Good German). Though The Descendants is more than just an acting vehicle for Clooney, it’s definitely directed with the aim of winning some awards. Clooney plays a little outside of his wheelhouse here, being the jilted and grieving husband rather than the cool cat playboy. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that his excellent chemistry with snubbed co-star Shailene Woodley was spot-on in the film.

Why He Might Win

Again, the easy answer is: “Because he’s George Clooney.” Here’s where the popularity contest really comes into play. The media loves Clooney. The ladies love Clooney. The Academy loves Clooney. Starring in an acclaimed film helps him out a lot, but even more so, his competition isn’t as fierce as it has been the last times he’s been up for the Best Actor award. Two years ago, his performance in Up in the Air was eclipsed by Jeff Bridges’ sure-bet performance in Crazy Heart. Similarly, four years ago, his turn in Michael Clayton couldn’t beat out Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. While the Best Actor field is still strong this year, Clooney is the clear front-runner partially for his performance but also because of how much the industry loves this guy.

Why He Might Not Win

While odds are on Clooney for this year, he’s not out of the woods. Each of the other candidates have something over him, whether it be the popularity of his buddy Brad Pitt or the momentum of Jean Dujardin in The Artist. You never know the outcome of the race until the card is read on stage, and Academy voters can be fickle, so even if this is Clooney’s award to lose, that could actually happen.

Previous Nominations: 2 for Best Actor; 1 for Best Supporting Actor

Previous Wins: 1 for Best Supporting Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Why He Was Nominated

Some actors are nominated for awards not just because they gave a fantastic performance but for other reasons. It could be their time because they’ve had such a great career (like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets). It could be because the movie they’re in hits a political hot button (like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia). It could also be because the movie they starred in is so beloved that they’re riding its wave of popularity. This is the case with The Artist, in which Jean Dujardin was lucky enough to star. Not to downplay his performance in the least, but the attention and focus that the players in this film get are bolstered by the fact that the industry has been buzzing about the movie since before it was officially released in December.

And as to not downplay Dujardin’s acting, he does a fantastic job in the role. He brings the look and feel of Hollywood’s golden era, all without uttering any dialogue (well, almost without uttering any dialogue). No one even notices that Dujardin’s a French national because he exudes the early Hollywood star so well, and it’s such a charming film.

Why He Might Win

The biggest asset for Dujardin is the movie in which he stars. The Artist has been riding a wave of popularity for months, and in spite of some haters out there, it’s sweeping up plenty of awards. In fact, there are few films in the awards race this year that have been garnering large numbers of multiple wins, and The Artist is one of them. Plus, Dujardin has done well so far in award season, winning a BAFTA and the Golden Globe, among others.

Why He Might Not Win

Like Demián Bichir, the biggest problem that Dujardin faces is his newness to Hollywood. Again, a foreign movie star for years, Dujardin is an unknown in the states, and fresh faces have a really tough time bringing home Best Actor awards. Plus, his Golden Globe win was for a Comedy/Musical rather than the entire field. The Drama Golden Globe went to Clooney this year for The Descendants, and traditionally dramas have fared much better in wins than comedies and musicals at the Oscars.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Why He Was Nominated

Even though the nuances of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were lost on many Americans who saw the film, few will argue that Gary Oldman wasn’t fantastic in it. Though a subdued film that showed the true nature of spying (that is, sitting around in poorly lit rooms, listening to things), there was a power behind the movie. A dud with American audiences, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy did better overseas, particularly in the UK, the home country of its source material. Oldman played the legendary literary character of George Smiley, a retired spy who uses his wits to uncover a mole in British intelligence. Oldman’s performance was powerful enough to make him stand out over other great actors in the cast, like John Hurt, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds and last year’s Best Actor Oscar winner Colin Firth.

Why He Might Win

Of all the actors competing for this award, Oldman has the veteran quality that the Academy loves so much. Going against two newcomers (Bichir and Dujardin) and two blockbuster hounds (Clooney and Pitt), Oldman has age and respect on his side. He also benefits from the concept that it might be his time, even though he has plenty of years left in him. After coming on strong with Sid and Nancy in 1986, Oldman has had a colorful and rich career in film, playing a wide range of characters. With no previous Oscar nominations, the Academy might just feel it’s time to give Gary Oldman what’s due to him.

Why He Might Not Win

The richness of Oldman’s career and the reserved popularity of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are his biggest enemies in this Oscar race. The Academy gets starstruck a lot, and even though he’s a very recognizable actor, Oldman just isn’t the movie star type to compete with George Clooney. His versatility can be perceived as “A-list character actor” to the more fickle and superficial voters. Add to this the fact that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wasn’t a monster hit in the U.S., and a lot of the people who did see it didn’t love it, things don’t look so good for Oldman to win.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Why He Was Nominated

Like his pal George Clooney, Brad Pitt has star power on his side. Over the better part of the last two decades, Pitt has been able to balance his blockbuster vehicles with critically-acclaimed films. He’s a darling of the press, and he’s very popular in the industry. Moneyball comes from a good pedigree, and there’s a lot of love from the Academy for that film (which explains the rather inexplicable Best Supporting Actor nomination for Pitt’s co-star Jonah Hill). Hollywood loves a good, inspirational sports movie, and it also loves an actor who can sizzle through Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue. Pitt handled this part with expertise, playing a cool guy whose back was against the wall, offering a level of empathy and sexiness to a role that could have easily had none.

Why He Might Win

Pitt’s biggest advantage here is his star power. He has been in the game about as long as Clooney has, though he will always be perceived as the little brother. If the Academy has tired of Clooney’s yearly bid for Oscar gold, they might fall back on the other popular choice, which would be Pitt.

Why He Might Not Win

While Pitt has the star power and popularity to justify a Best Actor win, this simply isn’t his best performance. It’s not that he didn’t do a good job, but rather this role demanded less of him than his previous nominations (i.e., a man aging in reverse in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and a manic mental patient in 12 Monkeys). Additionally, while he has been nominated quite a bit for this film, he’s only won smaller regional awards. The big wins for Moneyball have been for its script and not its stars.

Previous Nominations: 1 for Best Supporting Actor, 1 for Best Actor

Previous Wins: 0

Full Academy Awards Coverage

Welcome back to Junkfood Cinema; we take our Coffy black…and with six spoonfuls of Häagen-Dazs. You have just stumbled Across 110th Street and Hit! the internet’s most Boss bad movie column like a Hammer, and there’s No Way Back. Every Friday (Foster), we Drum up another Jive Turkey, becoming Mr Mean as we Savage! and Slaughter the movie right In Your Face.

But then, as if we were a Thing with Two Heads we lay aside all our Hangups to tell you why we think the film is actually Super Fly. Then, for The Final Comedown, we’ll offer a Big Time delicious themed snack food item for you to cram down your food Shaft.

This week’s big score: Hell Up in Harlem

Alas it is time once again to bid farewell to Blaxploitation History Month, and this third incarnation in which we’ve focused on the best of the best worst blaxploitation sequels. We may not have broken any new ground or radically advanced the medium of irreverent film journalism, but some how, against all odds, we managed to undeniably not get sued. So please enjoy this chicken we just counted well before it hatched.

What Makes The First Film Bad?

Hell Up in Harlem is the sequel to Black Caesar starring one of my absolute favorite blaxploitation icons: Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. How it took Williamson eleven Blaxploitation History Month entries before he was spotlighted is beyond explanation, but I’m sure I’m owed one prescription-strength punch to the mouth from Dr. The Hammer. In Black Caesar, Williamson plays Tommy Gibbs, a streetwise gangster who systematically usurps power from many of the Italian crime families in New York. Black Caesar is essentially a Warner Brothers gangster film with an African American in the role traditionally reserved for the likes of James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson; right down to the pinstripe suits and (appropriate) tommy guns (womp womp). For the first two and 3/4 acts, Black Caesar is one of my favorite blaxploitation films. But in its last moments before the credits, it completely shits the bed…then shits it again…then sets the bed on fire…then topples the building housing the bed which is also made of shit.

You see, The Hammer had rules for his onscreen personae. That’s right, the man was so unstoppably badass that casting him in your movie meant conforming to alternative filmmaking commandments with the understanding that breaking them would find you on the loosing end of a game we like to call Hide-n-Go-Count-Your-Teeth. The rules were pretty simple: 1.) Hammer always gets the girl 2.) Hammer wins his fights and 3.) You can’t kill Hammer. Black Caesar violates the last edict by killing Hammer at the end. Not only does Hammer (as Tommy) get killed, he gets shot in the middle of a busy street, chased to an abandoned lot, and beaten to death by a group of youths. The film then pans to the skyline and throws the arbitrary date, August 20th, 1972, onto the screen. What the what what when what? Is that the date of the first day of production on Black Caesar or the director’s niece’s birthday? Or was the writer perhaps just severely broken up over the death of Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations during the attack on Pearl Harbor? Naval history predilections notwithstanding, it is easily one of the worst film endings I’ve ever witnessed that, AGAIN, violates Sir Hammer’s rules.

What Makes The Sequel Bad?

My guess is that, and mind you this is not based on fact but rather how it plays in my head like an Unsolved Mysteries reenactment on an infinite loop, director Larry Cohen thought he could pull one over on Ol’ Freddy Hammer by convincing him Tommy would survive the hit, and then, using creative (read: fart-brained) editing, dared to kill him off without Williamson being any the wiser. But upon seeing the film, Hammer became enraged with rage, marched right down to Cohen’s office and repeatedly introduced his face to his own desk. Then, as crimson human-sauce poured from his quivering, split lip, Cohen promised to write a sequel that brought Tommy back despite the fact that he very definitely killed him at the end of Black Caesar.

Enter Hell Up in Harlem.

Hell Up in Harlem begins as should any good sequel released within the same year as the first, by recapping the events of the end of its predecessor just in case we forgot. We get to see Tommy shot AGAIN and watch him try to escape AGAIN. Only this time, he gets away, steals back the crucial ledger full of the names of corrupt police and politicians (A Slaughter’s Big Rip Off Rip Off? No, idiot, shut up), and then calls his dad. His pop then meets him at the lot instead of that group of youths we very clearly saw kill him. It’s the pinnacle of “don’t worry about it” writing in which Cohen recaps the things we saw at the end of Black Caesar, and then just rewrote the elements that would preclude a sequel like, you know, that whole being beaten to death by a group of children thing.

From there, Cohen fills in the blanks (and by that I mean the sea of blankness in the script after the first two pages) with nothing but violence. There’s not really a story per se, as much as there is a never-ending series of vengeance montages filmed independently of thought or context. We see people getting shot hither and thither or car bombs exploding never-introduced thugs into pieces which end up hither, thither, and over there. The plot is incidentally forced in while Tommy reloads. It’s the Rocky IV of gangster films. What few plot elements the film feels appropriate to share with the audience are haphazardly communicated  through voice-overs, cutaway shots, and ADR; as much an afterthought as a belated birthday card from an estranged father…who thought for sure you died at the end of Black Caesar. Otherwise, the only cinematic language this film speaks is MuzzleBlastese, and it has a nasty stutter. It’s the very definition of run-and-gun filmmaking, in that all they are really concerned with is crowding the screen with as many shots as possible of Fred Williamson running and firing a gun.

It’s probably best that the film has as much trouble standing still as a sugar-snorting kindergarten class after a sixteen hour nap. If we were given the opportunity to stop and think about what little is unfolding before us beyond the hit parade, we’d probably find it difficult not to notice what a giant bag of dicks Tommy Gibbs has become since the first film. He kidnaps and redistributes the children of the woman who sold him out (and then later freaks out when someone else kills her), he calls a nun a hooker before promptly bedding her, and punches police officers in the face before peacefully complying with their simple request (not the corrupt cops mind you, but the ones sent to bring him in for routine questioning). He also refuses to believe his own father, you know the one who somewhat very much saved his life earlier in the film, over the word of a cracked-out hobo. The only thing he doesn’t do is get a preacher killed…oh wait he totally does that too. I hate to say this, but I feel like Tommy really paints a negative portrait of the ruthless black gangster.

Hell Up in Harlem suffers on a technical level from a see-saw of an overly-specific soundtrack and a thoroughly confused sound design. First to the latter, the film’s sound designer was evidently handed the scripts to eight separate new projects requiring of his talents. Then, in a moment of pure DickVanDykeitude, he tripped over an ottoman and faceplanted on the floor; scattering the pages of the scripts in a festive fit of clumsiness. This may explain h0w Hanna-Barbera sound effects make their way into the opening chase sequence or why Shaw Brothers-style dull meat-slaps accompany one of the big brawl scenes. I could be wrong of course, perhaps it’s merely that Tommy Gibbs studied under the master of the flying guillotine and is entrenched in a blood feud with Barry Rubble. It is also conceivable that the production of Hell Up in Harlem was sponsored by Budweiser, as at one point in the film a group of four approaching men in the park sounds like a thundering herd of Clydesdales.

Then there’s the soundtrack which, as near as I can tell, is specially designed to tap into the super niche demographic of blaxploitation fans who are also, how shall I put this, blind. The lyrics to the underscoring songs are born not of the “write what you know” school of songwriting as much as the school of “write exactly the things you see in front of you with no figurative license whatsoever.” When Tommy begins his date with Jennifer by buying her a rose, the song ‘Jennifer’ begins with the lyric, “a rose for you.” Which of course leads to the scene of Tommy spending Sunday at the zoo with his son to the eerily cryptic tune ‘Sundays at the Zoo with My Son.’ Tommy’s release from prison is accompanied by the catchy, supposedly rhetorical, ‘Don’t It Feel Good to Be Free?’ I was waiting for the chart-topping hit ‘These People Made the Movie’ to play under the end credits.

Why I Love The Sequel!

The existence of the second film makes the first less insulting and therefore upholds the greatness of its first two acts. If Black Caesar was really the sole chapter of the Tommy Gibbs story, the film’s ending would sour me to it forever. But the fact, albeit a contrived and brain-mocking fact, that Gibbs survived for the sequel makes that abysmal final curtain in the first film null and void. I don’t even necessarily care that Hell Up in Harlem is the hopelessly padded out mulligan for that first ending; they set out to correct a five minute misstep with a ninety-four minute film. And I’ll be an avenging disco godfather if this thing doesn’t have more ill-conceived insulation than my house’s attic…which I tried to weatherproof with cotton candy and Swiss cheese. At one point, Tommy’s rival flies to L.A. to escape his wrath. We not only see Tommy chase him to the airport, but then also subsequently purchase his own ticket, go through security, take off, land, and then collide with his rival at baggage claim. All that’s missing is the ten minute scene wherein Tommy heatedly argues with the gate agent who informs him that his overly bloated story device will have to purchase a second seat.

Luckily for us, Tommy does plenty more in this film than just negotiate the trivialities of air travel. As we previously might have hinted at, he also kills enough people to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with corpses. He’s not so much as gangster anymore as he is a superhero granted superhuman badassitude by accidental exposure to Hamma’ radiation. He shoots drug dealers in broad daylight, snipes fools from a scaffolding high above Times Square, and even kills a dude with a beach umbrella. Tommy is so badass that his remarkably inappropriate turtle neck and polyester pants beach attire does nothing to hinder his ability to move undetected through the crowd. He’s such a spectacular hitman that by the end our desire to see him execute a hit supersedes our need to know who his targets are and how they fit in with the “plot.” Hell, he’s so unburdened by the laws of reason in his assassinations that I’d even believe he could outrun a police car on foot, which is good because he honest-to-Dolemite outruns a goddamn police car on foot! Gibbs finishes off his biggest foe by slowly hanging him from a tree using a makeshift noose he hastily fashions from a pair of neckties. Apart from racial implications of this kill, with all the flack given to the 70s for its hideous fashion, I’m just glad Larry Cohen at least stuck up for the durability of those fabrics. Tommy even leads a major siege on the island manor of the mafia commission! Oh my good burger, that siege.

So the covert task force approaching from the water are about as covert as an elderly ladies’ swim class at the Witchita YMCA. Luckily however, all the guards stationed around the manor are apparently being paid to stand at the shore and stare…at the house. Yeah guys, I think you’ve fundamentally missed the point of guarding the house; intimidating the house itself into remaining still is not what they meant. So Tommy and his men snorkel up to the shore like a squad of Navy SEALS, well not SEALS necessarily; more like surprisingly buoyant manatee carcasses. Then they somehow activate their sleeper agents inside the house and all the black maids pull revolvers to take out the first wave of guards. Now, full disclosure, I haven’t read or seen The Help yet, but I’m almost 100% sure it ends in much the same way. The siege ends in an inexplicable victory for Tommy’s guys who then have the maids serve up a big soul food feast for the bosses. It is quite possibly one of the most racist things I’ve ever witnessed in a blaxploitation films. It’s not so much that the maids offensively cluck off the contents of the feast as if Al Jolson was their acting coach, but the mobsters react to all this delicious food as if they’ve just been asked to eat their own parents.

As much as I rip on the music  in this film for being too on-the-nose, in it’s defense, it is absurdly on-the-nose. But it also features a killer theme song, as is common practice for this genre. The theme song has the requisite funk beat and is belted by a near-shrieking soul singer to emphasize both the titular hell and the location in which it is up in. Oh, by the way, that singer is none other than Edwin Starr. Starr of course is the man who gave us the most fundamentally flawed Army recruitment song ‘War, What is it Good For?’

Junkfood Pairing: Hell Up On Hotdogs

Bear with me here, I’m not crazy. Granted, it is nearing sunrise and I have been drinking my signature scotch and (baking) soda cocktail while cramming jellybeans up my nose for the last seven hours, but still not with the for crazy.

Get yourself a bottle of Hell Sauce (trademark symbol) and pour it liberally (read: unwisely) over a hot dog you bought from a vendor in the park. You now have Hell up in your hotdog. Hopefully you’ll avoid the fate of the mobsters in the movie and won’t die with half a hotdog hanging out of your gob. Hopefully. Hell Up on Hotdogs.

Give Yourself Indigestion With More Junkfood Cinema

The Film: Fight Club (1999)

The Plot: Our nameless Narrator (Edward Norton) works for a major auto manufacturer, investigating fatal crashes caused by product defects and running cost-benefit analyses to decide whether it’d be more expensive to recall the deadly cars or to pony up settlements in future class-action lawsuits. Sound like an amoral, soul-murdering job to you? Our Narrator agrees and embarks on a fumbling quest for peace. He gets a hearty shove down the path toward enlightenment when a) his apartment full of “versatile solutions for modern living” mysteriously explodes, b) he strikes up a love/hate relationship with the morbid nihilist Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), and c) he joins forces with soap entrepenuer and terrorist mastermind Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) to found the Fight Club movement.

The Review: It was 1999 and the Earth was facing doomsday. Due to a design vulnerability that was almost as idiotic as the Death Star’s fatal exhaust port, every computer network on the planet was expected to erupt in flames at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Knowing that the world was going to end in a few short months anyway, Hollywood studios collectively said, “Fuck it,” and gambled on a slate of commercially risky and thought-provoking films: American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, The Matrix, Office Space, The Phantom Menace and, of course, Fight Club.

The first rule of Fight Club is, you can’t be ambivalent about Fight Club. It’s unapologetic and outspoken in its critique of modern values. It suggests that an entire generation of American males has been emasculated by consumerism. And it depicts acts of violence (of both the brutal mano-a-mano variety and seditious acts of terrorism) nonjudgmentally.

That last item was the sticking point for many critics of the day, who saw scenes of bare-chested men gathering in parking lots and basements to punch each other into a pulp and freaked the hell out. The brutality of the images blinded many to the message Fight Club tries to convey.

And what is that message? For me, at its most basic level, Fight Club is a challenge to dispense with every manner of artifice, deception, pretense and just plain B.S. that cloaks our social rituals. Fight Club urges us to set aside our vanity, discard the mask of our public personas and reach out to one another with complete honesty.

Our Narrator has been living in a world of shallow artificiality for so long that when he finally experiences an authentic moment of communion with another person (Robert Paulson, played by Meat Loaf and his amazing prosthetic “bitch tits”), he weeps. That exhilarating moment of big, rubbery catharsis is what ultimately sends our Narrator and Tyler Durden on a journey to deflate and subvert the myths we’ve been sold since birth.

And — in the film’s delirious third act –- our Narrator discovers that the grandest illusions of all aren’t even the ones society pawns off on us: They’re the lies we tell ourselves.

But why spend 139 minutes watching this film when you only have 433,617 minutes left to live?
Well, you probably noticed that the world didn’t end on Jan. 1, 2000. Oops. But we’re pretty sure that on Dec. 21, 2012, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Lou Diamond Phillips will descend from the sky in a lethal hail of sulfur and locusts. And if you’ve seen Fight Club, you’ll be well-prepared, having already come to grips with your own mortality. As our Narrator says, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Grab your imaginary friend and take a look at these other fine films to watch before your brain melts.

There’s always a very certain moment when you realize you’re watching a bad film. The magic of that moment comes from the small inkling of hope you have that the bad film you’re watching will turn out to be one of those gloriously bad films that’s highly entertaining, if light on good filmmaking. Thankfully, many films fit that bill. Unfortunately, Gone is not one of them, vacillating between hilarious ineptitude and mind-numbing stupidity.

The plot centers on Amanda Seyfried‘s character Jill, who has apparently crash-landed on a planet similar in appearance to Earth. Despite being populated with humanoids, none of the aliens on Earth 2 behave in any way resembling an actual human being. Jill is a young woman trying to cope with a traumatic past. She claims to have been abducted by a mysterious man and kept in a deep pit in the forest littered with human remains. She was able to escape and tell the police her story, but they found no traces of the pit nor of any foul play in her apartment and thus concluded that she was batshit crazy and had her committed to a mental institution.

Jill has been living with her sister Molly and trying to readjust to the world, but everything is turned upside when Molly goes missing one night. Convinced that her sister was abducted by the same man, Jill goes to the police, only to be mocked and told there’s nothing wrong. Flummoxed, Jill takes matters into her own hands, embarking on a Scooby Doo-like chase for the man she knows kidnapped her sister.

I think my favorite part about Earth 2 is how generous everyone is with their motor vehicles. Jill’s first lead comes from a neighbor who saw a van parked outside her house. She tracks the van to a locksmith business and, after breaking into a van and waving a gun in Joel David Moore‘s face, she is told that a guy came in around 2:30AM who “needed to move some tools.” So of course, Joel David Moore let him borrow one of their vans. I mean, the guy paid him a few hundred dollars and promised to bring it back and leave the key on the back tire. Obviously, the locksmith place must double as a van rental, and all you need to take one is a Coke and a smile…and a few hundred bucks. Earth 2 is similar to the 1950s, where trusting strangers to bring back expensive things like your company van might not seem so completely idiotic.

It’s bad enough that this is a major plot point in the film just one time. Luckily, this happens two more times. Jill tracks the guy to the hotel he was staying at and gets some info from the janitor. Needing a new car after having to abandon her own, she convinces the janitor to let her borrow his for a wad of fives and tems and the promise that she’ll bring it back the next morning. I’m sorry, what? WHO DOES THAT?! These are the same type of people who help Nigerian princes buy oceanfront property in Utah. And once more, just to really drive home the point that we are in fact on an alien planet where no one values their automobiles, Jill finds herself needing yet another vehicle, so she goes to ostensibly her only “friend” in the world, a co-worker, who of course lets Jill borrow her car despite knowing that she’s probably cuckoo pants. I’m fairly certain that cars are the prizes in giant cereal boxes on Earth 2.

Perhaps the best part of Amanda Seyfried playing detective is that she turns out to be the Sherlock Holmes of finding her sister. She never once chases a bad lead and everyone she talks to has the most information possible, leading her directly to the next person she needs to talk to. She finds a receipt for a hardware store at the locksmith and Joel David Moore says the man who borrowed the van gave the name Digger. HA, GET IT? ‘Cause he digs holes in the forest into which he throws girls? Digger. HAHAHA AWESOME. At the hardware store, the friendly owner, who informs her that they don’t have security cameras because “this isn’t Home Depot,” is able to give her a basic description of the man, as well as what kind of car he drove and even where he lives. I’m honestly surprised at this point that she didn’t get a social security number as well. Chasing that bread crumb down to the rundown hotel where he’d been staying, she asks a random guy skateboarding out front for help and of course discovers her suspect’s real name and room number. At this point, Jill collecting blood type, fingerprints, and a full-on urine sample would have been just as believable.

Here’s a random assortment of things that actually happen during the film, just to give you an idea of the ridiculous nature of the script. At one point, Daniel Sunjata‘s character refers to young girls as “split tail” and informs Wes Bentley that if he wants to chase that particular item he should go be a fireman, bro. During Jill’s search for the culprit, a guy uses the term “rapey eyes.” There are several points where Jill finds a roll of duct tape and holds it up so the camera can linger on it ominously, and we, the audience who haven’t demanded our money back yet, can all marvel at how she must be on the right track. Because, you see, the abductor tied her up with duct tape and even put a piece over her mouth. And only he would have duct tape. It’s certainly not a common product that everyone in the world has in their home. No, Gone espouses that, at least on Earth 2, possession of duct tape is clear evidence of criminal activity. Obviously. While on the phone with the man she believes may be the abductor, he actually says the words “there’s no service out here,” inducing groans while doing away with the cell phone issue. Problem is, he’s supposed to be “out here” at the moment he says that line…you know…on the phone. SO THERE MUST BE SOME SERVICE OUT THERE!

As if all this weren’t enough by itself, the entire “third act” centers on the idea that Jill is going to drive out to the forest to meet this guy. Alone. Without telling anyone where she’s going. This is like Horror Movie 101, where you don’t go down the basement steps alone at night. A fourth grader could have told her that was a bad idea. And yet, off she goes, perfectly happy to follow directions, from a probable killer, like “go to the abandoned ranger station” and “take the road until it ends and then get out of your car.” Apparently the survival instinct doesn’t exist on Earth 2. There’s even a moment where Molly’s boyfriend calls and Jill tells him she’s going to meet the guy. She could have easily said something Scooby-esque like “hey, if I’m not back in two hours, send a Scooby snack after me.” But in all honesty even a simple “hey, here’s the route he’s having me take through the forest, maybe let the coroner know so they can go ahead and start driving this way to pick up my bloody corpse” would have raised the intelligence level by half a percent. But no, Jill’s content to drive out to BFE to meet a likely killer with no plan or back-up of any kind.

Yet, the essential problem with a film like Gone is simply that even I didn’t realize just how much of its inanity would be presented through dialogue alone. I only wish that I had brought pen and paper to scribble furiously so that I could communicate to you in exact quotes the preposterous nature of everyone’s reactions. Sunjata in particular says things that no police officer would ever say. The script doesn’t even have the decency to paint Wes Bentley as an obvious red herring. No police officer looks as creepy as Wes Bentley. In fact, there are no real misdirects at all, which is what lets the air out of the fun balloon. As hilarious as some of the lines and Jill’s reactions to things are, and truly, there are many laughs to be had here, the straightforward nature of the conclusion is the cinematic equivalent of a pair of Dockers, bland and a little uptight. If this movie had thrown in two or three red herrings and a couple of twists on top of twists, it could have been a gloriously, uproariously funny bad movie. As is, however, Gone is just an occasionally amusing mess of lazy writing, bad dialogue, and alien behavior.

The Upside: It’s shot decently and will certainly make for a great RiffTrax/drinking game at some point in the future.

The Downside: Everything, plot, dialogue, performances, internal logic of any kind.

On the Side: Screenwriter Allison Burnett, who also penned this year’s Underworld: Awakening (a surprisingly entertaining film) is a man.

Before he taught Mickey Rourke how to wrestle or Natalie Portman how to Adagio, Darren Aronofsky was showing Jared Leto how to shoot up. Requiem For a Dream was the director’s second feature film – Pi came out in 1998 – and his position as an auteur began to grow from there. Some consider Requiem Aronofsky’s best film. Regardless if you find it engaging or grotesque, there’s no denying the man’s direction on the film is something to be appreciated. Even studied.

So let’s take a few minutes and hear what Aronofsky had to say about Requiem For a Dream. There’s bound to be wonderful anecdotes about the director skipping with Marlon Wayans down the Coney Island boardwalk or buying ice cream in the Central Park with Jennifer Connelly. Surely this commentary can’t include anything too serious. The movie has a giant refrigerator that dances and sings. It may be gnashing and screaming, but it’s all how you look at it, right? Anyway, let’s get into it. The uppers are about to kick in, anyway.

Requiem For a Dream (2000)

Commentators: Darren Aronofsky (writer, director), MUCH love for Ellen Burstyn (deserved)

• Aronofsky starts out by saying how proud he is of Requiem For a Dream. After Pi‘s success, the director was offered the chance to do whatever he wanted. He knew right off that he wanted to adapt Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel. Everyone told the director he was crazy. He refers to getting Requiem For a Dream completed as a “war.”
• The film begins just like Selby’s novel. As Aronofsky points out, the first line of the book is, “Harry locked his mom in the closet.” As soon as Aronofsky read this, he knew it would be a powerful way of opening a film. Aronofsky appreciated how subjective Selby’s novel was – something the director strove for with Pi. Aronofsky wanted to capture the subjective tone for Requiem, to put you in the viewpoint of the main character, which is why the opening sequence is a split-screen. Both Harry and Sara Goldfarb are the focal points.
• During the scene where Harry and Sara (Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn) are arguing, you can hear an orchestra tuning up. “The idea was that it’s an orchestra tuning up, because what we were about to see was a requiem.” Aronofsky states that the main focus with the film was in creating a musical composition, one that climaxes throughout the film’s run-time.
• Aronofsky states that, other than Ellen Burstyn, Kronos Quartet were the most inspirational artists he worked with. Think Aronofsky is a 30 Seconds to Mars fan?
• Aronofsky’s introduction to Hubert Selby Jr. was “Last Exit to Brooklyn.” He discovered the book in his college library, because the word “Brooklyn” attracted his eye. “When you’re from Brooklyn or you see anything about Brooklyn, you’re immediately fascinated,” he says. The book changed his life. He kept it out for a year, reading it numerous times. Once he entered film school, Aronofsky took inspiration from Selby to make his short films. Fortune Cookie, one of Aronofsky’s student shorts, was based on one of Selby’s short stories. When “Requiem For a Dream” was released in 1978, Aronofsky got a copy but could only read halfway through. The novel had several story ideas he had had, but, as he states, “they were written by a much better writer 20 years before I was even writing.” It was Eric Watson, Aronofsky’s producer and co-writer on Pi, who convinced him that Requiem should be his next film. Selby was very open to Aronofsky adapting his novel.
• Aronofsky and Watson optioned “Requiem For a Dream” for $1,000. Aronofsky remembers that, at the time, coming off of Pi, this was a huge amount of money for them.
• Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald) is a character Aronofsky created that isn’t in Selby’s novel. In the novel, Sara Goldfarb mostly watches soap operas and game shows. Aronofsky wanted the film to be timeless and knew the programs they had the character watching could easily date the film. Tappy Tibbons was a character in a screenplay Aronofsky wrote after film school, inspired by self-help gurus like Tony Robbins. Over the years, he developed the character as well as the Month of Fury infomercial Tibbons hosts.
• According to Aronofsky, Tappy Tibbons’ Month of Fury is a self-help plan. The plan consists of three things you have to do in order to revolutionize your life. 1) no red meat. 2) no refined sugar. Aronofsky doesn’t give away what the third step is. He says you have to search on the Internet to figure it out. If you have the Requiem For a Dream director’s cut DVD, go to the chapter selection menu, go to the Chapter 21-24 tab, hit up twice, then hit enter. A hidden Tappy Tibbons informercial begins playing. The third thing is…spoiler alert…no orgasms. This one drives people crazy.
• Selby’s novel took place in Brooklyn instead of Coney Island. Since Aronofsky grew up in Coney Island, he wanted to include locations and events – Harry and Marion (Jennifer Connelly) breaking onto the roof of a building was not in the novel – that were personal to him. Selby didn’t mind the change thinking it still captured the same culture.
• “You could give her five or six notes, and she just bounces and bings between them and just completely hits each one on the nose, and, at the end, she’ll just do a little, extra corkscrew that will just completely screw you up, but it’s completely great and completely blows your mind even though you don’t really know what it is that you saw,” says Aronofsky on Ellen Burstyn. He mentions she lost 40 pounds for the role. She wore several different prosthetic pieces (some which took 4 hours to apply), wigs, and makeup throughout the film and never complained about how arduous it all was. Plus, there are several moments in the film where Burstyn will act in a way that hides the lines on her prosthetic pieces from the camera’s view.
• Aronofsky was not interested in Requiem For a Dream as a junky movie or a film about drug paraphernalia. He was more interested in the before and after of drug use. One of his influences while working on animated shorts in film school was Jan Svankmajer, a Czech animator who, according to Aronofsky, uses a lot of “before and after photos.” Aronofsky used Svankmajer as an influence when attempting to create a film about what drugs do to you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
• The way Tyrone C. Love, played by Marlon Wayans, mixes styles both in the way he dresses and the way he talks is another instance where Aronofsky wanted the film to be timeless, that it should be about addiction regardless of the time period in which it actually takes place. ”Ultimately Requiem For a Dream is about the lengths people go to escape their reality, and that, when you escape that reality, you create a hole in your present, because you’re not there. You’re chasing off a pipe dream in the future, and then you’ll use anything to fill that vacuum.” Aronofsky explains that the film is about addiction to anything, not just illegal drugs. It could be addiction to coffee, TV, or even hope.
• Aronofsky mentions there are about 150 digital effects in Requiem For a Dream. He and friends from film school formed Amoeba Proteus, a digital effects company designed to create smaller effects that would go unnoticed. The company has done digital effects on all of Aronofsky’s films.
• The only direction Aronofsky gave Peter Maloney, who plays Sara’s doctor, Dr. Pill, was to never look at Ellen Burstyn. Maloney later told Aronofsky it was the most difficult direction of his career.
• The editing style and the way Aronofsky creates montages in the film is something the director refers to as “hip hop montage.” It’s a technique he’s been developing since Fortune Cookie. He was inspired by hip hop music he listened to throughout the ’80s, and hee would take images and sounds and tell a story by cutting rapidly between them all. He made sure to use the technique across all the stories in Requiem to indicate it was about all drugs and all addiction, not just one. There are also moments for each character where the montage isn’t used – specifically when the character is reluctant to take whatever drug they’re addicted to. It indicates them questioning for only a moment what they’re doing to themselves.
• While filming the scene between Tyrone C. Love and his girlfriend, Alice, played by Aliya Campbell, Aronofsky remembers Wayans performing it very seriously. Not getting what he wanted and knowing the time crunch they had to get the scene done, Aronofsky told Wayans to stop acting
  “like a serial killer.”
• “Once again I prove to the world that I’m more of a pornographer than I am a filmmaker,” says Aronofsky as the film fades into the sex scene between Tyrone and Alice. The director notes he really enjoyed shooting the scene mainly because of the actors. “Sex scenes can be fun to shoot,” he notes. This is the man who would go on to make Black Swan. Apparently, he still holds onto this philosophy.
• Aronofsky says the scene where Harry goes to visit Sara was his favorite scene in Selby’s novel, it was the scene that ultimately motivated Aronofsky to make the film, and it is his favorite moment in the finished film. Aronofsky feels this scene is representative of the whole story, how it’s about the difficulty addicts find connecting with the people they love. The scene has three sections: the light side when things are pleasant at the beginning; the dark side when the two begin to argue after Harry finds Sara’s drugs; and back to the light side when Sara makes her confession at the end. Aronofsky sees Ellen Burstyn capturing this performance in this scene as his proudest moment. Aronofsky notes all of Burstyn’s performance in the confession moment was from one, single take. She actually did three takes, but she did each take differently. They couldn’t be combined or cut together. Burstyn is actually out of frame at one point at the end of the take used. Aronofsky was pissed when he noticed this during filming. He went to cinematographer Matthew Libatique to see what had happened. Libatique had tears streaming down his face from Burstyn’s performance. He had fogged up the lens and couldn’t see to properly frame it.
• After filming had completed, Burstyn told Aronofsky that it might happen only once during a stage performance where she would feel like she had completely become the character. She told him that it had happened three times while filming Requiem For a Dream. One was the “confession” scene. The next scene is when Sara has lost it and is trying to explain herself to the TV production company. The last is the very end dream sequence where Sara and Harry come together on Tibbons’ show. This moment was filmed on the first day of filming. The only way Aronofsky can describe what Burstyn is doing in Requiem is that she’s “surfing the character.” He also compares the actress to Michael Jordan in that they both completely lose themselves in the job they’re doing.
• Aronofsky mentions how much he loves playing with sound design. “My favorite device on the mixing board are those little joysticks where you can actually move the sound to different speakers. If you give me that in the editing room, you’ve got to add an extra two days to the budget. Don’t tell the producers that, though.”
• Sean Gullette got upset with Aronofsky on the day they shot the scene between him and Jennifer Connelly at dinner. Gullette had prepared a lot for the scene, but Aronofsky felt the only thing the scene needed, even more important than the dialogue, was Gullette’s character eating a steak. He doesn’t indicate if he’s exaggerating or not – which would lead me to believe that he’s not – but Aronofsky says Gullette ate five and a half steaks while filming this scene. On that day, food won.
• Aronofsky points out the “Snory-cam” shots where the camera is essentially strapped to the actor and held completely in the middle of the frame while the background moves around. Aronofsky wanted each, main character in Requiem to get a Snory-cam shot. The production couldn’t afford what he had planned for Harry. He won’t explain what the shot is, because he intends to use it in a then-future film. It might involve Harry jumping off the top rope of a wrestling ring, but probably not.
• When Marion returns to the apartment after sleeping with Arnold, Sean Gullette’s character, she and Harry sit on the couch quietly, not touching each other. In the uncut take, Connelly and Leto actually did make contact at one point, but Aronofsky cut that moment out of the finished shot not wanting there to be any kind of connection between the two.
• Most of the extras during the grocery store scene are actual junkies brought in off the street. Aronofsky remembers one extra who had to leave at 3AM during filming to pick up heroin as well as some people shooting up on set. This was also the night Jared Leto had his mom and grandmother come to visit the production.
• Aronofsky wanted Florida to become a character in the film. In Selby’s novel, a lot of text and inner monologue is devoted to the characters’ desires to get to Florida, believing it to be the answer to their prayers. Unable to include inner monologues and unwilling to throw in needless exposition, Aronofsky added little moments here and there that make you think of Florida. The Florida orange on the side of the semi-trailer truck is just one. There are several other instances scattered throughout the film.
• The sequence where Sara Goldfarb hallucinates that her apartment becomes the Tappy Tibbons infomercial set was an arduous scene to create and shoot. Aronofsky notes the storyboard document for the 5-minute sequence was 56 pages long. “When people ask me what directing is about, the best metaphor I give it is conducting, because I think you basically have an orchestra of all these different instruments and you basically have to get them to play together to play a single musical piece.”
• Before production began, Aronofsky and Clint Mansell listened to several different requiems from different composers. They picked out their favorite moments in each. Mansell took these, sampled them into a drum machine, and played them percussively. Kronos Quartet added their own notes with sharp violins. All of this was culled together and used for the film’s last act.
• “The film is constructed to build to a climax. It’s that climax which caused all the rating problems with the MPAA.” Aronofsky recognizes how intense Requiem For a Dream is, but he also understands the moral it tells. He believes a rating system is important in the film industry, and  he recognizes that people need to know what they’re going to see and what they’re children are going to see in a movie. “But there’s clearly a big, big hypocrisy on what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable in movies. The fact that you can show as much gun violence as you want in a PG-13 movie as long as you don’t show blood I think is completely backwards thinking.” Aronofsky believes it’s much more important to show teenagers the violence guns can cause if mishandled rather than what he calls “A-Team fantasy” where people fall down dead but bloodless after being shot. “The way I look at the world is that guns and violence is bad and human sexuality is good.”
• Selby’s first day on set was when they were shooting Sara getting the feeding tube pushed into her nose. The author lasted 10 minutes before breaking into tears because of Burstyn’s performance. Selby also plays the prison guard who is taunting Tyrone near the end of the film.
• The final 10 minutes are where, as Aronofsky states, all hell breaks loose. He wanted the culmination of all four stories to be as insane as possible. For the scene where Sara gets shock treatment, the director had everyone set up for the shot. He then brought Selby in and had him read that chapter of his novel to Ellen Burstyn as a way to prepare her.
• During the “ass-to-ass” scene, Aronofsky mentions – kind of casually – that it’s based on something he experienced first-hand. No details are given. Not that there need to be any.
• When Aronofsky reached the end of Selby’s novel, he wasn’t sure if Harry lived or died. He asked Selby about the character’s outcome. The author answered, “Of course, he lives.” When Aronofsky asked why he said “of course”, Selby responded that the character had to suffer more. The director remembers some debates about trying to give the movie an upbeat ending. He mentions how his generation was raised on TV shows like The Brady Bunch and Magnum P.I. where every story is wrapped up nicely by the end, how everything works out fine in most movies and TV shows. “As we all know, it doesn’t always work out in the end. Anyone who’s lived 20 years on this planet knows that things get fucked up, and they stay that way.” The director didn’t want to undermine Selby’s message with his version.

Best in Commentary

“When we were amoebas in the primordial soup we were searching for carbon molecules to get high off of.” – Aronofsky on the timeless theme of addiction.

“I really wanted to capture the visual style of Selby’s writing. What that entails is entering the subjective mind of his characters, because, what’s great about Selby’s characters is that you don’t know always where the dreams start and where the dreams end and characters float in and out of ideas.”

Final Thoughts

Aronofsky’s commentary track for Requiem For a Dream is a very interesting listen. The director has a very subdued voice, thick with a Brooklyn accent making it very distinct. He recorded this track by himself, so there’s no bouncing off another commentator about how something worked out or how a particular day of shooting went. He doesn’t need someone to bounce memories off of. He handles it all well by himself here dishing out insight into his vision for the film, the technical side of completing it, and really getting into what it was like filming some of the more harrowing and unforgettable sequences.

He sticks very heavily to Ellen Burstyn and her stunning performance. He also speaks on Marlon Wayans, Jared Leto, and Jennifer Connelly’s performances, though the time and detail given to them is nowhere near as interesting as what he has to say about Burstyn. Nonetheless, the Requiem For a Dream commentary track is absolutely one you should check out. That goes double if you like the film, triple if you’re an overall fan of Aronofsky’s work.

Learn more about the movies you love with Commentary Commentary

If you’ve been paying attention to Act of Valor’s aggressive marketing campaign, you’re aware that it’s a fictional film starring real-life active-duty Navy SEALs that aims for as much realism as possible in its depiction of their tactics and missions. That’s a fascinating concept and it’s been seamlessly executed by filmmakers Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh. Initially conceived as a training film, the picture gradually evolved into the hybrid that it is once the co-directors sold the SEALs on the project, proposing to “take Top Gun, pull Maverick out and put in the real Maverick,” as Waugh told the Los Angeles Times.

But at the end of the day, this is a long-winded SEALs recruitment tool, a noble gesture that’s just not sufficient basis for a feature film. The usual cynicism with which one would greet a feature-length ad doesn’t apply because, obviously, if there’s any group that deserves this sort of heroic treatment, the SEALs are it. The worldview on display here is aggressively simplistic, of course, but the essential, elemental purpose behind the picture is a noble one — paying tribute to these soldiers who put themselves in extreme harm’s way for the rest of us.

That sentiment alone can’t sustain more than 100 minutes of compellingly crafted but repetitive action, tagged to dramatic filler that’s so one-dimensional and underwritten that it’s barely even there. The thin plot, such that it is, pits SEAL Team 7 against cartoonish Eastern European terrorists plotting attacks against the United States. This spurs a rescue mission in the Costa Rican jungle, a long-winded shootout in cartel-controlled Mexico, and other similar enterprises.

The action scenes are elaborate and fiery events, full of believable-sounding SEAL jargon and brisk, expert violent maneuvers. The added authenticity that comes with casting real SEALs kicks in as the camera dives off choppers with them, submerges next to them in water, and hurls us straight into the hyperactive line of fire. Save for when the filmmakers indulge in the forced first-person POV style that’s best left for video games, the scenes achieve an involving mix of documentary grittiness and heightened cinematic spectacle.

Yet the action sequences are set-pieces that unfold within a narrative vacuum. They don’t resonate as anything but technical achievements. That’s partially because the mundane story barely resonates, seemingly drawn straight from the sub-par ’80s action reservoir.

But the movie ultimately plays out as little more than a curiosity because the characters don’t matter. Our heroes, Chief Dave and Lt. Rorke (the SEALs are not identified or credited with any more specificity than that) are indistinguishable deep-voiced bores, a propagandist’s dream vision of what rugged, handsome, manly SEALs should be. They talk mission, mission, mission, except for when they spout dull bromides about honor, valor, country or fighting hard, quote Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, or deliver whatever other recruitment buzz words the screenplay musters.

One other problem: these men are surely great American heroes, but they can’t act. With one exception, a senior chief SEAL presumably playing himself to some degree, the soldiers deliver laughable dinner theater-caliber performances with some of the most awkward, amateurish line-readings imaginable. Of course, it feels tacky and seems strange to criticize Navy SEALs for their acting failures. It’s an odd inverse of the norm, in which one would bemoan a buff Hollywood action star’s inability to convincingly get into character as a soldier in some jingoistic junk. But that’s the world McCoy and Waugh have created, the product of this unusual fusion. In movies, characters matter, and no amount of earnest flag-waving can compensate for that.

The Upside: The movie pays tribute to a worthy subject and features some compelling action.

The Downside: The Navy SEALs who star in the film can’t act and the plot is thin, action flick gruel.

On the Side: I think it’s safe to assume that the Kathryn Bigelow-Mark Boal collaboration about Seal Team 6′s hunt for Osama Bin Laden will be a bit more interesting.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr fights a battle of wits between the stuffy and overly dramatic Oscar contenders that will be buzzing through the weekend and the genre-specific schlock that is being released with no hope of winning any sort of award at all. Before hunkering down on the couch to watch Billy Crystal time warp back into the mid-90s on Sunday, Kevin skydives into the multiplex to check out Act of Valor. Then he joins a commune to be a modern hippie while watching Wanderlust. Finally, he leaves the multiplex to stalk Amanda Seyfried and her on-screen sister because he believes he’s at least as creepy as the legions of creepy guys in Gone. Oh, and that Tyler Perry movie? He skips that with a wave of the hand and a snap of the fingers. If it ain’t got Madea in it, it ain’t worth watching!

Want to hear what Kevin has to say on the Fat Guys at the Movies podcast? Click here to listen as Kevin is joined by Leonard Wilson from Through the Shattered Lens to talk about this bizarre dichotomy of weekend movies.

ACT OF VALOR
Studio: Relativity Media

Rated: R for strong violence including some torture, and for language

Starring: Roselyn Sanchez, Emilio Rivera, Jason Cottle, Nestor Serrano, Gonzalo Menendez and the Navy SEALs

Directed by: Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh

What it’s about: Real active-duty Navy SEALs are enlisted to star in this international military thriller about an international terrorist plot and the brave men who try to stop it.

What makes the grade: The concept of embedding a camera in the thick of military exercises is an interesting cinematic experiment. With movies getting more and more overblown with hyper-realism, Act of Valor offers a nice reality check. Of course, I’m not a Navy SEAL, so I have no idea how accurate this really is, but it seems really accurate at least.

When boots are on the ground and the SEALs are in military mode, the film shines. It’s got some thrilling action sequences in it, grounded in reality, but powerful as hell. They’re jumping out of real airplanes here and riding on real nuclear submarines. When possible, they also use live fire rounds, which is something that can look cheesy if left to simple special effects.

As military thrillers go, this one work, and it honors a great group of heroes. The story itself is somewhat rote, but the grounded tactics behind it make the film a damn cool experience.

What fails: I have all the respect in the world for the Navy SEALs. Trust me, if I were behind enemy lines, there would be no one else I’d want coming to my rescue. However, if I’m making a movie about that rescue, I’d want real actors in front of the camera.

It’s not that the SEALs who take on the lead roles in this film are bad actors. In fact, they’re probably the best actors the Navy has to offer. Unfortunately, when they’re put up against professional actors in other roles in the film, their flaws shine so bright they overpower everything else.

Add to this that the character and plot-driven elements of the movie are as cheesy as can be, playing like a bad episode of Army Wives. I don’t doubt the commitment of these men and their families, but they’re not terribly comfortable in front of the camera, and any downtime from the mission feels like a recruitment video for prospective Navy SEALs families.

Who is gonna like this movie: Action junkies and anyone with active duty military personnel or veterans in their inner circle.

GONE
Studio: Summit Entertainment

Rated: PG-13 for violence and terror, some sexual material, brief language and drug references

Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan, Wes Bentley and Daniel Sunjata

Directed by: Heitor Dhalia

What it’s about: Amanda Seyfried plays a young woman who had once escaped a murderous kidnapper. When her sister goes missing, she just knows it’s her abductor trying to get back at her. Unfortunately because the police found no evidence of the original kidnapping, they don’t believe her at all. That leaves her to track down her sister by herself and hopefully to find the man who abducted her in the first place.

What makes the grade: Okay, I know this movie is getting raked across the coals. And to be fair, everything that the rest of the critics are saying about it is absolutely true, 100%. However, that’s what made the film so fun for me.

Gone isn’t a spoof of the mid-90s female-centric thrillers like Kiss the Girls or Jennifer 8. It’s more of a homage to them, laying on the tropes so thick it’s hard to look past them. But unlike other movies that try to capture this (like last year’s godawful The Roommate), Gone is in on its own joke.

Every guy in the movie is creepy with “rapey eyes” (an actual line in the film used to describe someone). The logic makes no sense, especially when you get to the end and try to piece everything together. Hell, there’s even a scene where Seyfried goes into an abandoned apartment to find dog food scattered all over the place, yet a cat still leaps across the screen for a jump scare.

Just as there’s a 30 percent chance that Seyfried’s character is bonkers throughout the movie, there’s a 30 percent chance that the filmmakers were delivering calculated gag after calculated gag, leaving the audience to laugh hysterically at the result. I know I did.

What fails: Of course, with all that said, there’s also a 70 percent chance that the filmmakers thought they were making a taut, unique psychological thriller. If that’s the case, then yeah, the rest of the critics are right. It’s a total turd.

Who is gonna like this movie: Anyone who thoroughly enjoyed those mid-90s female-centric thrillers that don’t even play on late-night basic cable any more.

WANDERLUST
Studio: Universal Pictures

Rated: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language and drug use

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Malin Akerman, Paul Rudd, Ray Liotta and Justin Theroux

Directed by: David Wain

What it’s about: Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston play a Manhattan couple who fall on hard times and move to a commune outside of Atlanta. There, they learn to find themselves, having their comfort zones, sexuality and views of the world challenged.

What makes the grade: There are some funny moments in the movie. Unfortunately, most of them are shown or telegraphed from the trailer. At the very least, Paul Rudd has some great moments, even if the funniest one makes no sense in the context of the rest of the film.

At the very least, Wanderlust could play as an unintended prequel to Our Idiot Brother.

What fails: I’m not a fan of Jennifer Aniston in the least, and her presence in the film cancels out any possible enjoyment that I could have gotten watching Paul Rudd have some fun. Unfortunately, Aniston is as much the focus as he is. Her comedic timing is stunted in this film, and once again we have her trying to act raunchy but refusing to show her breasts on film. I say to get those fun bags out while they’re still relatively perky, ‘cause you know she’ll end up playing a stripper in a couple years in an attempt to win some award.

The biggest problem with Wanderlust is that it’s an utterly pointless film made about thirty years too late. Dipping into the hippie and commune pool for comedy material isn’t even working on television shows any more, although they keep trying to cram it into scripts.

There’s no focus with the characters or the story. On one hand, the hippies are portrayed as utter nut cases. On the other hand, they’re a loveable family. When the forced raunchy jokes are played out, we’re given a preachy and stilted rom com storyline that clashes with the entire rest of the film.

Sadly, Gone is a far funnier (albeit intentionally unintentionally funny) than Wanderlust even attempts to be.

Who is gonna like this movie: People who like 30-year-old jokes and aren’t repulsed by Jennifer Aniston.

As I note each week in Aural Fixation, music is one of the most important components in a film, providing the underlying emotion in certain scenes as well as the overall tone of a film. Creating this musical landscape is no easy task and the five scores nominated this year were brought to the screen by four talented composers (yes, someone got nominated twice.) While last year gave us slightly more innovative music with scores from first time composer Trent Reznor and the more electrified Hans Zimmer, the past year in film seemed to hearken back to the more classical era of filmmaking and the scores followed suit.

From tales of adventure, spy thrillers, a different perspective on war to a look back at the early days of filmmaking, the nominated scores kept pace with their respective films and came from composers that ranged from Academy veterans to first time nominees. While I was admittedly more excited (and felt slightly more invested) in the nominees last year, the composers selected for the potential honor this year are well-deserved and created scores that undeniably elevated each their films.

Who will take home the golden statue this year? Stay tuned to see if my prediction of who will win proves true. Read on for the nominations and my predicted winner in red…

The Adventures of Tintin, John Williams

Why He Was Nominated:

Based on the famed comic series, Williams helps bring this story to life with strings that practically jump off the screen and horns that would inspire anyone to dive into the mystery surrounding the much sought after Unicorn. Williams’ score keeps this adventure moving while still sounding light, fun and never too serious. Tintin was a great time at the movies and Williams’ score helped keep that kinetic energy running through every frame.

Why He Might Win:

Williams is no stranger to the Academy (and has over forty nominations to prove it) and his well-honed chops created a score that is both full-bodied and layered while never being overwrought. Even when creating music for a “children’s film,” Williams never plays down to his potential audience, keeping the music as rich as the visuals on screen and proving why he is constant fixture on the Oscar nomination list.

Why He Might Not Win:

Williams is not only going up against three other composers, he is also pitted against himself (with a second nomination for his score for War Horse.) Seeing as his score for War Horse is rooted more in emotion than entertainment, Williams may prove to be his own toughest competition. TinTin is about the fun of adventure while War Horse deals with the ramifications of war, a subject matter more likely to be associated with Oscar than the slightly madcap consequences of TinTin’s adventures. War Horse’s more serious tone may tip the scales away from TinTin if voters find themselves choosing between the two Williams efforts.

Previous Nominations: 47

Previous Wins: 5

The Artist, Ludovic Bource

Why He Was Nominated:

Grand and moving, Bource’s score for The Artist already sounds like a classic. Rising to the challenge of creating the music for a silent film, Bource composed a score that not only sounded like it was from another time, it also provided the whimsy needed to accompany wordless actors left with only their facial expressions and gestures to express their emotions. Just as full, live orchestras used to perform in theaters along with a movie’s screening, Bource called on the full range of orchestral instrumentation from strings to percussion to horns to create a score that is not only comprehensive, but strong enough to stand as the only sound in The Artist.

Why He Might Win:

With a Golden Globe for Best Original Score already under his belt, Bource seems poised as the one to beat come Oscar night. Unlike his fellow nominees, Bource’s score did not just play under scenes and highlight climatic moments, it provided all the sound in The Artist (no small feat.) Taking us back to a time in film when instruments had to convey the myriad of emotions we can now rely on words for, Bource’s score truly sounded like it was taken from the 1920s and gave The Artist real weight making this return to the early days of filmmaking both exciting and entertaining.

Why He Might Not Win:

As Bource’s first Oscar nomination, going up against heavy-hitters like Williams and Shore may prove too great for the composer (who has a mere nine films under his belt while his competition has more than double that on their resumes.) While Bource’s score impressively made up for the lack of dialogue in this silent film throwback, it also did little to bring anything new to the table and may prove to be too “by the numbers” in the end.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Hugo, Howard Shore

Why He Was Nominated:

In a story that stars children (but is certainly not aimed at them), Shore was able to impressively navigate Hugo’s darker moments with music that never lost its sense of magic and hope. With soaring strings and curious wind instruments, Shore created a score that was inspiring while still giving those heavier scenes the weight they deserved through dissonant piano refrains and rumbling percussion. Complex and intricate, Shore’s score helped made Hugo a breathtaking time at the movies and thanks to its level of detail, holds up outside of the film as well.

Why He Might Win:

Shore has won an Oscar almost every time he has been up to bat and Hugo once again finds him creating music for a specific time period in a setting laced with mystery and adventure – tropes that served him well during the Lord of the Rings reign and got Shore his four Oscar wins (his fourth for Best Original Song for “Into the West” from Return of the King.) Shore’s score not only elevated Hugo’s scenes, it also enhanced the character’s performances by giving slight winks to the audience that coincided with various character’s reactions that were slightly less on the nose than The Artist.

Why He Might Not Win:

Having already lost to The Artist at the Golden Globes, Shore’s darker sounding score may yet again see itself beaten by Bource’s more dramatic and classical sounding one. While Shore’s score also played along with the characters and action in Hugo, Shore’s more subtle approach may end up working against him and get overlooked when comparing these two scores which were both influenced by the early days of filmmaking.

Previous Nominations: 4

Previous Wins: 3

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Alberto Iglesias

Why He Was Nominated:

With off-putting oboe, piano refrains, and almost jazzy percussion, Iglesias’ score stands out from the crowd with its more varied tone which keeps you guessing at every turn (much like the film itself.) While Iglesias is known more for his music in Spanish films (particularly those directed by long-time collaborator Pedro Almodóvar), he takes on the world (and sound) of a British spy thriller with a masterful hand that proves music truly is a universal language.

Why He Might Win:

The only nominee working slightly “out of the box,” Iglesias created a score that is rich with intrigue and added to the film without directly interacting with it. While unquestionably up against some stiff competition, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy could end get its recognition here (and end Iglesias’ losing streak) if it ends up getting overlooked in the other two categories it is nominated for.

Why He Might Not Win:

Having been nominated twice before (with no win), the still slightly green Iglesias may get passed over on a ballot with Academy favorites like Williams and Shore. In the face of more “classic” sounding scores, the reason Iglesias may stand out may also end up being the reason why he loses.

Previous Nominations: 2

Previous Wins: 0

War Horse, John Williams

Why He Was Nominated:

Williams’ score for War Horse is both epic sounding and thoughtful with robust instrumentation that shows Williams full range and talent as a composer. The score for War Horse spans various tones from hopeful to heartbroken, violent to comforting as the Narracott family and Joey navigate the rough and unpredictable waters of life during wartime. While Williams explores these different tones, he is also mindful to bring it all back together in the end, proving he had a purpose and a plan for every note.

Why He Might Win:

Williams is clearly a favorite among Academy voters and his score for War Horse is the definition of Oscar gold with its singing strings and booming percussion. As I said earlier, given the choice between the two, Williams’ score for War Horse seems like the stronger Oscar contender (as opposed to his score for TinTin) as it tackles slightly heavier fare and does so with a score that is never monotonous or bogged down.

Why He Might Not Win:

While certainly grand in its own right, Williams may simply be out matched here. Having also lost to The Artist at the Golden Globes (and with War Horse bolstering six other nominations), War Horse may suffer the same fate as Hugo and pick up its Oscar gold elsewhere, leaving The Artist to yet again take home the win here.

Previous Nominations: 47

Previous Wins: 5

Complete Academy Awards Coverage

Do you guys even like hearing rumors straight out of Deadline Daytona Beach? Be honest. Is there value in them for you as movie fans? Do you feel like reporting chatter is just like being back in Film Blogging High School (where all of Rejects attended, and were subsequently kicked out). Tell me. In any case, it’s a slow pre-Oscars Friday, and it looks like all we have to report are rampant rumors. So here they are.

Deadline Detroit reports that MGM “is making an offer” to rising star Joel Kinnaman for the titular role in the new Robocop. That’s right, the news isn’t that MGM has made an offer, it’s that they will. I’m getting to old for this game. But while rumors and gossip and chatter are, by and large, not very exciting, this news is – mainly because the possibility of a fresh face in an old property is actually interesting.

You might recognize Kinnaman from a number of stand-out roles – the Swedish actor first came to American attention on the television series The Killing, and he’s also had roles in big budget flicks like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Darkest Hour, along with a memorable supporting role in Safe House. But cinephiles likely know him from his other collaboration with Safe House director, Daniel Espinosa, as Kinnaman starred in Espinosa’s Snabba Cash films (known here in the States as Easy Money). If Kinnaman is offered the role (and if he takes it), he’ll be directed by Jose Padilha (director of the Elite Squad films) from up-and-coming scribe Josh Zetumer (who memorably penned that Bourne Identity 4 script that never got used after Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon left the franchise). What’s that? Is that the possibility of an exciting new remake? Yes, yes it is.

In still more hot, fresh rumor action from Deadline Henderson, the outlet also reports that actors are “lining up” for the villain role in Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (the Cormac McCarthy-penned film that will star Michael Fassbender as a lawyer who gets pulled into the drug underworld). Some of those possible actors? Jeremy Renner, Javier Bardem, and apparent long-shot Brad Pitt. Those guys certainly sound like villains to me.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly gathering of links that was almost known as Oscar News After Dark, but then its creators remembered that they only really care about he Oscars for about one week per year, so it would have been a waste. With that in mind, welcome to the final edition of News After Dark in that one week of the year when we care about the Oscars.

We begin tonight with an image tweeted by writer Roberto Orci, who may or may not being issuing a controlled leak situation for Paramount from the set of Star Trek 2. Said producer Damon Lindelof of the pic, which depicts a yet unknown character played by Benedict Cumberbatch being subdued by Zach Quinto’s Spock, “The weird thing about that Trek photo is we weren’t even shooting. Quinto just really hates Cumberbatch.”

Special Urgent News Bulletin

You can now follow Movie News After Dark on Pinterest, a place where our FSR scavengers will pin awesome movie-related things to a board in the cloud. It’s very New Age, we assure you. Just click the button below.

Speaking of the Oscars, the folks over at Den of Geek wonder, Was the 1970s the best decade for Oscar Best Picture? A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky. Yeah, those were pretty good movies.

First Showing presents its annual list of the 19 best movies that you didn’t see in 2011. Wait… Who even remembers 2011? That was so long ago.

Legit nerds will want to buy this limited-edition The Walking Dead Vannen watch. It will come in handy over the course of the next 10 episodes as the gang continue to do absolutely nothing interesting and probably spend time scouring the woods looking for anything but action.

Twitter pal Ryan Gallagher turned us on to Adventures in Design, a new podcast covering the world of art and design. You know, like movie posters. We’re big of those around here. To drop a nerd cred bomb on you, here’s an example of one classic that’s hanging in Reject HQ at this very moment. It’s an original Tim Doyle:

Off the top of his head, Martin Scorsese listed 85 films you need to see to know anything about film. He’s always been my favorite muppet. Now he can be your favorite tuition-free film studies professor. It’s a brilliant list.

The Art of Manliness presents a list of unsung manly movie quotes for every occasion. Note to the websites of the world: leading with a quote from Miracle will always get you linked in News After Dark.

The audacious country known as France held their own awards this week, the whatever annual César Awards, in which they loved up on The Artist just as the Academy will here in America in less than 48 hours.

Are IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes still our best reference tools? Movies.com’s Christopher Campbell takes A Sad Look at Crowd-Sourced Film Sites. Quick, someone tell him that IMDb is run by 15 year olds in Kansas. Todd Phillips said so.

Terrence Malick is making a movie about sexual obsession and the Austin, TX music scene, two things that seem to go hand-in-hand. Because hipster girls are cute, that’s why. Also, the movie has Gosling.

We close tonight with a video called Oscar Party Drinking Game. It begins lobbing easy ones at a simple premise. When someone thanks God, take a drink. When the host changes their outfit, take a shot. And so on. Then it gets a little strange. And then it gets really strange. It’s a bit disjointed and all sorts of ADD, but we can’t help but give them points for the effort. And the desire to take the joke way too far.

I’ve spoken before about the highs of Dario Argento’s early career and how it sits in direct contrast to the abysmally depressing filmmaker he’s become in the last two decades. But his filmography doesn’t have a timeline clearly separating the good from the bad. His best work remains the five features he made from 1975 to 1985 with everything before and after that period being a major mixed bag.

And that includes 1971′s Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

A rock drummer finds himself stalked by a masked killer out to frame him and make his life miserable, but who’s doing it and why? And more importantly, how will it affect the sales of his upcoming album?

“I’ve made a decision. Sticking it out here is better than going to prison.”

Roberto (Michael Brandon) is a professional drummer with a budding music career and a lovely wife named Nina (Mimsy Farmer) waiting for him at home every night. He also appears to have a stalker. One night he turns the table on the man who’s been following him and traces him to an abandoned theater. He confronts the stranger, a knife is pulled, and the nameless fan falls dead.

Suddenly a flash bulb goes off, and Roberto looks up to the balconies to see a masked witness documenting the crime in pictures.

The next day he finds copies of the pictures around his house and that night is attacked in his home by the same psycho paparazzi who warns him that his life is only going to get worse. Which it does as people around him began dying. Soon Roberto is letting the understandable stress get to him in the form of a short temper, nightmares and maybe an inclination towards infidelity with Nina’s incredibly attractive and willing cousin Maria (Laura Troschel). He takes the advice of a beach bum named God and hires a private detective to help find some answers before it’s too late.

There are elements here that work extremely well including the camera work and overall atmosphere that Argento would use to far greater effect just a few years later in Deep Red. Tracking shots move in and out of danger, knife strikes are mimicked with the camera’s eye and shadows are taken full advantage of in an effort to increase terror and suspense. The cinematography on display in the abandoned theater early on as well as a maze chase at night is slick and notably stylish.

The narrative itself is weighed down with some odd choices, but that should come as no surprise in an Argento film either. Roberto’s nightmares about a beheading in the Middle East are nonsensical, and dialogue flashbacks to a disappointed father are placed in such a way as to make it impossible to tell who’s actually “hearing” them. Are they Roberto’s memories or someone else’s? And the “recent scientific discovery” that the last thing a person sees is captured on their retina for several hours? Yeah. That’s here too.

But while a weak story is expected in an Argento film his protagonists (and the actors who portray them) are usually charismatic and/or interesting enough to engage viewers in their fate. Think David Hemmings in Deep Red, Jessica Harper in Suspiria or Jennifer Connolly in Phenomena. Brandon does a fine enough job here, but neither he nor his character ever really give viewers a compelling reason to watch.

The new Blu-ray from Shameless Screen Entertainment in the UK comes in a bright yellow case that will have no problem standing out on your Blu-ray shelf. This is the first HD transfer of Argento’s film (if I’m not mistaken), and the image looks quite good. The colors are vibrant, the definition is sharp, and the picture looks very clean. There are a couple times where the quality drops noticeably, but those are the added scenes that Shameless has integrated back into the film. The special features include:

• Introduction & Exclusive interview with Writer & Assistant Director Luigi Cozzi
• Restored film rebuilt with prior missing footage
• New English audio remastered from original vault materials
• Optional Italian audio + English subtitles
• Trailers & Photo gallery

Four Flies on Grey Velvet bears several of the Argento calling cards fans have come to know and love, but they’re all somewhat muted compared to his later, more famous films. The set-pieces are far less elaborate, and the murders are far less graphic. It’s still a showcase for the director’s energetic and creative camera work though, and of course, it wouldn’t be Argento if the plot wasn’t more than a little convoluted. Fans of the director should definitely give it a watch, but it wouldn’t be the first of his films I’d recommend to newcomers. Or even the fifth.

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week looking for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent!

The other night I got into an almost knock-down fight with a colleague while we shared the stage on a Oscar panel over who we thought would win Best Supporting Actress this year. It’s not that we didn’t both agree Octavia Spencer had the best chance of winning, nor that she didn’t deserve the nomination, but we bickered over the fact that this year’s female performances were just so marvelous considering how utterly boring the Academy-backed films ended up being. There is no denying the fact, this year’s “Oscar worthy” films (yes, I want you to read that with air quotes and everything) were easily some of the most tired, bland, and kitschy offerings we’ve seen this side of Shakespeare in Love.

But the one thing that is honestly saving this small group of voters from a strongly worded letter from my most prized stationary is the appreciation bestowed upon a fine group of actresses this year. The ladies sharing 2012 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations are all first time nominees (except for Janet McTeer who was previously nominated in 1999) with performances rivaling veteran women in the Best Actress category. If we go by what the previous award shows say, there is one clear winner, but I think each of these varied ladies brought their A-game with them this season.

Here are the nominations for Best Supporting Actress, with my predicted winner in red…

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Why She Was Nominated:

Bejo sparkles as Hollywood talkie star, Peppy Miller, in her husband Michel Hazanavicius’s love letter to silent era cinema. She hams it up and breaks in as the new  “it” girl for Kinograph studios recent foray into sound, while making enough time to charm the moustache off fallen star George Valentin (Jean DuJardin). Bejo is a natural beauty and she pumps in so much light into an otherwise underdeveloped character.

Why She Might Win:

Bejo is stunning on screen and easily takes on the challenge of acting with her whole body and absolutely no dialogue. She is beautiful to look at and exudes an overwhelming amount of charm in each scene

Why She Might Not Win:

Peppy is a bit stalkery for my taste and she is also a tad too cheesy of a character. Bejo’s nomination almost seems like it’s meant to pad out the list rather than actually give any competition to front-runner Spencer or fan-favorite Melissa McCarthy. Also, she’s married to the director who spends almost as much time allowing DuJardin to fly on screen as he does making his wife the object of the male gaze. She’s pretty and that’s about it.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Why She Was Nominated:

If you haven’t read The Help then you might not get why casting Chastain was an incredibly bold move. Yes, the woman was in a handful of films last year ranging from over-the-top flamboyant to reserved subtly to scenery chewing, but that doesn’t mean putting her in the role of Celia would have been my first choice. Despite early reservations, Chastain stole the movie for most audiences, and impressed even the most ardent source material critics. The character requires so much vulnerability paired with a huge, naïve heart, and Chastain brought that and more.

Why She Might Win:

She’s beautiful, powerful, and sensual as Celia. She’s playing a character that embodies the American dream of growing up poor and doing something with her life. She disappears into Celia, and never once do you question her character’s decisions.

Why She Might Not Win:

Two actresses nominated from the same film means a split vote or all-or-nothing odds. This isn’t her year to win, but it really should be.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Why She Was Nominated:

HAVE YOU SEEN BRIDESMAIDS???? Okay, sorry, I really just don’t believe we are having this argument. A made by women not just for women comedy went from condescending snickers amongst the industry to being one of the top earners of 2011. McCarthy won an Emmy, arguably, for her role in Bridesmaids and next she gets to play Jon Hamm’s love interest. If this isn’t living the dreams all women have then I don’t know what is.

Why She Might Win:

Here’s where that before-mentioned vote splitting between Chastain and Spencer might come in to play, allowing for this dark horse to take home the golden statue like nine puppies from a wedding shower. Also, producer Judd Apatow put in a lot of money for Oscar campaigning.

Why She Might Not Win:

Bridesmaids made people laugh, not feel uplifted because a rich white lady helped out an oppressed black lady. McCarthy should be the frontrunner over Spencer, but thanks to lack of respect in the Academy towards comedies she has absolutely no chance.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Why She Was Nominated:

McTeer did two things perfectly in Albert Nobbs: she transformed herself into a sexy handyman whose life intrigued the shy butler Albert (Glenn Close), and she went toe-to-toe with Close in the emotional depth department. It’s a shame she couldn’t be duking it out with Close and Meryl Streep in the Best Actress Category.

Why She Might Win:

If by some chance voters decide they hate The Help and everything it stands for then she might have a chance. But why would they do that?

Why She Might Not Win:

Her performance was a knockout but she has about as much chance winning as Bejo.

Previous Nominations: 1 (for Best Actress)

Previous Wins: 0

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Why She Was Nominated:

Minnie made a shit pie look delicious and then fed it to her former boss, the vile Hilly Holbrook. Spencer easily had the most buzzed-about performance of the year, even before you knew the pie was full of shit.

Why She Might Win:

This shouldn’t be why she “might” win, but why she will win. Minnie was a hard-to-understand gruff character in the book and she needed someone to not only become her but believe in her. There  is no doubt that Spencer understood Minnie and wanted to bring a vulnerability to her that any other actress might not have been able to achieve.

Why She Might Not Win:

Oh, she will win. Period. End of story.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Complete Academy Awards Coverage

This week, in place of the usual triptych of found items and a T-Shirt of the Week, Merch Hunter is dedicated entirely to the mighty tee, the single most versatile member of the wardrobe family. Why 12? Well, science has proven that 12 is the magic number in terms of tee ownership (don’t look it up, it was published in a science journal you probably won’t know of…), allowing the owner to rotate nicely across two weeks, while taking a three day slot for whichever design is the Featured of the Week. After a few months of this rotation, throw in a few wild cards, thanks to supplemental purchase, and you’ll have a winning formula for T-shirt success. And yes, it really should be that mathematical.

I seriously had to resist the urge to just make a list of the 100 Star Wars T-Shirts You Need To Own Now, but that will no doubt appear in the future, given how many incredibly impressive designs there are out there (and hardly any of them lining George Lucas’s pocket).

For once, my inane wafflings are not needed at all to sell the inclusions below, just look at the pictures and see how many of them you can resist. I’d advise buying them all obviously: but try to only wear one at a time.

1. Han Shot First

Buy one here.

2. Born To Rebel

Buy one here.

3. The Spinal Tap Skeleton Shirt

Buy one here.

4. Baggins Family Jewelers

Buy one here.

5. Drummers Get All The Girls

Buy one here.

6. This Is Bat Country

Buy one here.

7. My Name Is Inigo Montoya

Buy one here.

8. B Is For Braaaaaaains

Buy one here.

9. 8 Bit Karate Kid

Buy one here.

10. Why So Curious?

Buy one here.

11. Loving It

Buy one here.

12. Xenolution

Buy one here.

Oh, and you’re bloody welcome.

As far as we know, we’ve yet to feature any pants in Merch Hunter

It’s the biggest weekend in Hollywood, so of course Film School Rejects will be reporting live from the scene – and this time, they actually let us in. Wait, no, not the Oscars, the Film Independent Spirit Awards! The Independent Spirit Awards have been around in one capacity or another since 1984 (they were the “FINDIE” – Friends of Independents – Awards for their first two years), and in the past twenty-eight years, the awards have sought to honor films made with “an economy of means” (from micro-budgets, all the way up to $20m). With the awards now traditionally taking place the day before the Oscars, the Independent Spirit Awards work quite nicely as counter-programming for the big show. And, for people like me, who placed a film like Take Shelter above the rest of last year’s offerings, it’s a very imporant event.

I’ll be updating the winners! live! from a tent on the beach! today! Which is cool not just because it’s so insanely “Los Angeles,” but because the award show itself takes place this afternoon (kicking off around 1:30PM PT), but the telecast doesn’t air until tonight (at 10PM EST/PST on the IFC Channel) – meaning that you dear Rejects-readers will be the first to know all the winners.

After the break, I’ll be updating the winners the very moment they are announced (with winners in red), but that’s not all! Because this is Film School Rejects, I will also be sharing funny bits from the press tent, opinions on the food in the press cantina, stellar quotes from the winners just moments after accepting their awards, and anything else that happens to pop up. It’s going to be fun, I promise.

LIVE BLOG

12:57PM – I am settled into the press tent, with a lovely California wind blowing through the back of the structure. After fighting off other reporters (and, I think begging Movieline’s Jen Yamato for a Diet Coke), I have secured a chair, table, and working Internet! The awards show gods have smiled on me. I am starving.

1:02PM – Alonso Duralde is interviewing My Morning Jacket on the Yahoo! live stream. There is so much man-hair on the screen, but Alonso’s beard looks the best.

1:05PM – There is no food, but there is water. And booze. I have one or both of them. I will never tell. I run into Focus Features’ Gianluca Lignola in the “Press Cantina,” a friend and alumni of my own alma mater, Loyola Marymount University.

1:17PM – That “lovely California wind” is now positively chilling.

1:20PM – An editor sitting near me is actually yelling “mush! mush!” at her writer sitting next to her. I wish Grand Pooba Neil was here.

1:24PM – Five minute warning. I think I have frostbite.

1:26PM – Two minute warning. Who is this announcer? He sounds majestic.

1:29PM – Another member of the press arrives with his own chair. I thought I was on it by bringing my own Ethernet cable.

1:31PM – Pro tip: don’t show up for an awards show that starts at 1:30PM at 1:30PM.

1:32PM – Host Seth Rogen takes the stage. The crowd goes wild. Says he has “no fucking idea why we’re in a tent right now.” Touche. Rogen says the stage is “pretty fucking weird, too.” The stage crew in the tent is laughing hysterically.

1:35PM – The guy sitting next to me has a naked picture of his girlfriend (I assume?) as the background on his computer. Independent indeed!

1:37PM – Rogen is discussing the importance of awards season, including “Mostly, without awards season, we would not know what a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is.” He has now made a Chris Brown joke. The entire press tent is in stitches. Not sure how the crowd is taking this, but Rogen is winning big with the press. Big.

1:40PM – Rogen has been on stage for less than ten minutes, and I’m ready to start championing him to host everything ever.

1:43PM – Rogen starts up with Michael Fassbender dick jokes. Most of the press quickly decamps for the Cantina to grab boxed lunches. The press are so hungry.

1:46PM – Lunch is turkey on rye and a mini black and white cookie. This is literally my favorite lunch.

1:48PM – Presenters Zoe Saldana and Jeffrey Dean Morgan take stage to present Best Supporting Male.

1:49PM – Christopher Plummer wins for Beginners!

1:52PM – Plummer calls for everyone to raise their glass to Mike Mills.

1:57PM – Benjamin Bratt and Julia Ormond take the stage to present Best First Screenplay.

1:58PM – Will Reiser wins for 50/50!

1:59PM – Plummer enters the press room to wild applause and a fair amount of “woooOO!!!-ing.” He says he hopes awards buzz helps more people see the film. Jokes that he’s “going to croak any minute.”

2:02PM – The audio feed is cut to the press room from the show so we can all enjoy Plummer. Best Cinematography is up next, though I am so far away from the TV that I can’t see who the heck is presenting it.

2:04PM – Guillaume Schiffman wins for The Artist. Penelope Ann Miller accepts.

2:05PM – Garfunkel & Oats is now performing. A member of the press takes the stage and tells everyone in the front to basically sit the eff down so as to not block camera shots.

2:08PM – Will Reiser arrives in the press room. Says “the most validating part of making this movie is how it has really connected with people.” Reiser is currently writig a film “inspired by a vacation I took with my grandmother when I was 14″ and how they ended up at a couples’ resort, where he lost her, partially due to the effects of Alzheimer’s settling on her. He says that, tonally, it’s very similar to 50/50.

2:12PM – John Hawkes and Lucy Liu take stage to present Best Supporting Female. Shailene Woodley wins!

2:14PM – Woodley says the film “completely transformed her life.”

2:15PM – Anna Kendrick intros the Best Feature package for 50/50.

2:16PM – Patricia Clarkson takes the stage to lead a toast to Bingham Ray.

2:20PM – Shailene Woodley enters the press tent with a sweet and unsteady “heyyyy.” She calls George Clooney “a super-human.” Batman?

2:25PM – Anne Heche and Ed Helms pop up to present the John Cassavetes Award – which is the award given to the best feature made for under $500,000). Pariah wins! Woooo!

2:26PM – Take a scarf everywhere. Everywhere.

2:27PM – Penelope Ann Miller intros the feature package for The Artist. Meanwhile, press dude gets back up on stage to ask that no one use flash photography. I smell rebellion.

2:30PM – Sorry, dudes, bathroom break.

2:33PM – Back! Man, those are some nice Port-a-Potties. Seriously. My Morning Jacket is performing, Dee Ree and Nekisa Cooper are up on the press room stage.

2:35PM – Have you guys seen Pariah? It’s wonderful. You should see it.

2:37PM – Rogen announces “a very special treat.” That being? “By the end of the night, Michael Shannon will murder someone in this room.”

2:38PM – Chris Pine and Jessica Chastain enter to present Best Male Lead. Oooh, I am excited! Shannon! Shannon! Shannon! Think I can start a chant in the press room?

2:40PM – Press room cheers win Shannon’s nominee package airs. JEAN DUJARDIN WINS. WHY. WHY. WHYYY.

2:41PM – Penelope Ann Miller accepts. Everyone else is apparently flying back from Paris and the Cesars. Didn’t that award show happen like three days ago? Did no one invite Miller? I am bitter, I can admit it.

2:42PM – Someone intros some Best Feature package for some film. I am too deflated to notice.

2:43PM – Professionalism wins again! Rashida Jones and Ethan Hawke are presenting award for Best Documentary. I will mope later. Team Senna! What? Senna was not nominated? Ugh — wait! The Interrupters wins! Justice! There is some justice!

2:47PM – Sophia Lin wins Piaget Producers Award for Take Shelter. A video package shows her tearful thank yous, as these winners were announced on January 14. I wooooo! to myself.

2:50PM – Elizabeth Banks and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are next up to announce Best Screenplay. Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash win for The Descendants. 

2:53PM – Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz from The Interrupters arrive in press tent.

2:55PM – Best International Film to be announced! Some great picks in this list. Winner is A Separation. All of these nominees are quite deserving, so this is a bit of slam dunk category.

3:01PM – Also: take fingerless gloves everywhere. You’d think I hadn’t done this before (secret! I have!).

3:02PM – Laura Dern and Terrence Howard are presenting the Robert Altman Award, which is going to Margin Call, as announced way back when.

3:05PM – Zachary Quinto accepts the award, as he did double duty on the film – as actor and producer. Amusingly calls his day-to-day work as a producer as “a complete fucking nightmare.”

3:06PM – Bryan Cranston introes the Drive package. Looks better than ever.

3:07PM – Ileana Douglas introduces K’Naan. Holy shit, I am old – I have no idea who K’Naan is. Somebody call Google!

3:12PM – Grandma Kate really likes that lovely K’Naan fellow.

3:13PM – Rosario Dawson and Anthony Mackie are presenting Best First Feature. Given the Margin Call love, I’d be surprised if it doesn’t pull out the win.

3:17PM – Margin Call wins! Duh. You know what, for a first feature, that film is goddamn impressive – great cast, intelligent script, well-made.

3:18PM – Michael Shannon introduces the Take Shelter Best Feature package. I can’t overstate this enough – this film is phenomenal. His performance is phenomenal. Stop reading my ramblings and go watch it now.

3:21PM – Kirsten Dunst and Jonah Hill presenting something? They’re joking about how they pick who presents what awards – Hill thanks “AwardsMatch.com.” Anyone paying attention is giggling madly.

3:22PM – It’s Best Director! Hard to tell, because the photographers outside the tent are screaming at whoever is coming in next? Payne? Farhadi? Oh, it’s the cast of Margin Call!

3:24PM – And the winner is Michel Hazanavicius. I can’t. I don’t hate The Artist, but I consider it a well-made trifle and nothing more. There are better nominees, there are better choices.

3:26PM – Back in the press room, Quinto says he wants to keep acting and producing. One “woo!” from audience when he mentions filming Star Trek 2. It wasn’t from me, but only because I am too busy taking pictures of him on my iPhone and salivating like a dehydrated pug.

3:28PM – Olivia Wilde and Willem Dafoe presenting Best Female Lead. Chatter in press room: “what is Think of Me and how the hell can we see it?”

3:31PM – Michelle Williams wins for My Week with Marilyn. She jokes about first coming to the Spirit Awards ten years ago, wearing “her own clothes” and “cutting her own hair” and how that was “okay” in the context of everyone else in the audience. Sweet, applicable, honest speech.

3:36PM – Ben Kingsley is up to present the final award – Best Feature. “I love awards that are given to the right people for the right reasons.”

3:38PM – And the winner for Best Feature is…The Artist. 

3:39PM – Sigh.

3:40PM – Holy crap, Michelle Williams is adorable. In the press tent, she’s asked what it feels like to finally win, she giggles, “I know! A friend told me I’m like the Susan Lucci of the Spirit Awards!”

3:45PM – If I was wearing pants, they would have been charmed off by Williams by now.

3:48PM – And that’s a wrap! Wait — no, not yet, everyone from The Artist is entering press tent, although obviously not everyone is still making their way back from Paris, persumably by row boat. Penelope Ann Miller says, “the French are always late.” French reporter behind me snickers. A reporter asks a long question entirely in French, which apparently translates to “what did Harvey Weinstein contribute to this film?” A departing member of the press yells “money!” Mirth has returned to the press room.

3:55PM – Another thing that’s returned to the press room? Camel Unfiltereds. Wow.

4:00PM – Okay, now that’s really a wrap – computer battery almost dead, might possibly have strep throat, hungry for more mini black and white cookies. Thanks for reading along, and thanks to the Independent Spirit Awards for running a tight ship, a brisk show, and for being so good to working press.

WINNERS

BEST FEATURE (Award given to the Producer, Executive Producers are not listed)
50/50 Producers: Evan Goldberg, Ben Karlin, Seth Rogen
Beginners Producers: Miranda de Pencier, Lars Knudsen, Leslie Urdang, Dean Vanech, Jay Van Hoy
Drive Producers: Michel Litvak, John Palermo, Marc Platt, Gigi Pritzker, Adam Siegel
Take Shelter Producers: Tyler Davidson, Sophia Lin
The Artist Producer: Thomas Langmann
The Descendants Producers: Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor

BEST DIRECTOR
Michel Hazanavicius The Artist
Mike Mills Beginners
Jeff Nichols Take Shelter
Alexander Payne The Descendants
Nicolas Winding Refn Drive

BEST SCREENPLAY
Joseph Cedar Footnote
Michel Hazanavicius The Artist
Tom McCarthy Win Win
Mike Mills Beginners
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash The Descendants

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to the director and producer)
Another Earth Director: Mike CahillProducers: Mike Cahill, Hunter Gray, Brit Marling, Nicholas Shumaker
In the Family Director: Patrick WangProducers: Robert Tonino, Andrew van den Houten, Patrick Wang
Margin Call Director: J.C. Chandor Producers: Robert Ogden Barnum, Michael Benaroya, Neal Dodson, Joe Jenckes, Corey Moosa, Zachary Quinto
Martha Marcy May Marlene Director: Sean Durkin Producers: Antonio Campos, Patrick Cunningham, Chris Maybach, Josh Mond
Natural Selection Director: Robbie PickeringProducers: Brion Hambel, Paul Jensen

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Mike Cahill, Brit Marling Another Earth
J.C. Chandor Margin Call
Patrick deWitt Terri
Phil Johnston Cedar Rapids
Will Reiser 50/50

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD – Given to the best feature made for under $500,000. Award given to the writer, director, and producer.
Bellflower Writer/Director: Evan GlodellProducers: Evan Glodell, Vincent Grashaw
Circumstance Writer/Director: Maryam KeshavarzProducers: Karin Chien, Maryam Keshavarz, Melissa M. Lee
Hello Lonesome Writer/Director/Producer: Adam Reid
Pariah Writer/Director: Dee ReesProducer: Nekisa Cooper
The Dynamiter Writer: Brad InglesbyDirector: Matthew GordonProducers: Kevin Abrams, Matthew Gordon, Merilee Holt, Art Jones, Mike Jones, Nate Tuck, Amile Wilson

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Lauren Ambrose Think of Me
Rachael Harris Natural Selection
Adepero Oduye Pariah
Elizabeth Olsen Martha Marcy May Marlene
Michelle Williams My Week with Marilyn

BEST MALE LEAD
Demián Bichir A Better Life
Jean Dujardin The Artist
Ryan Gosling Drive
Woody Harrelson Rampart
Michael Shannon Take Shelter

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Jessica Chastain Take Shelter
Anjelica Huston 50/50
Janet McTeer Albert Nobbs
Harmony Santana Gun Hill Road
Shailene Woodley The Descendants

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Albert Brooks Drive
John Hawkes Martha Marcy May Marlene
Christopher Plummer Beginners
John C. Reilly Cedar Rapids
Corey Stoll Midnight in Paris

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Joel Hodge Bellflower
Benjamin Kasulke The Off Hours
Darius Khondji Midnight in Paris
Guillaume Schiffman The Artist
Jeffrey Waldron The Dynamiter

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director and producer)
An African Election Director/Producer: Jarreth Merz
Bill Cunningham New York Director: Richard Press Producer: Philip Gefter
The Interrupters Director/Producer: Steve James Producer: Alex Kotlowitz
The Redemption of General Butt Naked Director/Producers: Eric Strauss, Daniele Anastasion
We Were Here Director/Producer: David Weissman

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM (Award given to the director)
A Separation (Iran) Director: Asghar Farhadi
Melancholia (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany) Director: Lars von Trier
Shame (UK) Director: Steve McQueen
The Kid With a Bike (Belgium/France/Italy) Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Tyrannosaur (UK) Director: Paddy Considine

PIAGET PRODUCERS AWARD – The 15^th annual Piaget Producers Award honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources demonstrate the creativity, tenacity, and vision required to produce quality, independent films. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant funded by Piaget.
Chad Burris Mosquita y Mari
Sophia Lin Take Shelter
Josh Mond Martha Marcy May Marlene

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD – The 18^th annual Someone to Watch Award recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant.
Simon Arthur Silver Tongues
Mark Jackson Without
Nicholas Ozeki Mamitas

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD – The 17^th annual Truer Than Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant.
Heather Courtney Where Soldiers Come From
Danfung Dennis Hell and Back Again
Alma Har’el Bombay Beach

Thanks to the Film Independent Spirit Awards for letting us in!

A frustrated actor/director, a former alcoholic and bad father, an old man coming out as he approaches death, a mysterious and gentle mute, and a young whiz kid who may shake up the world of baseball — all in all, that’s a pretty eclectic bunch of nominees. Of course, there’s no real surprises in this category. With the exception of Jonah Hill, my personal favorite of the nominees, these are all safe and understandable nominations.

I, for one, am still baffled at how Albert Brooks didn’t get nominated. Who did he piss off to cause this? Someone must be behind this grave injustice! Are the nerds of the world still crying over this? They have reason to, I suppose. While they’re at it, they should continue to shed a few tears for — and sing the praises of – Patton Oswalt (Young Adult), Shea Whigham (Take Shelter), Ben Kingsley (Hugo), John Hawkes (Martha Marcy May Marlene), and just about everyone who wasn’t Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Like most of their respected nominees, they all gave tremendous performances.

Without further ado and less whining, here are the nominations for Best Supporting Actor, with my predicted winner in red…

Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn 

Why He Was Nominated:

Branagh’s playing Laurence Frickin’ Olivier, and who doesn’t love seeing a classic figure portrayed, not impersonated? Branagh made Olivier a character, not a laughable impersonation. Oh, it also helps that Branagh totally kicks ass in general.

Why He Might Win:

Branagh is My Week with Marilyn. He made a decent film a ton of fun to watch. All the interactions between Branagh and Williams are gold, everything else in the film is trying to keep up with the duo. Branagh has always been regarded with respect and acclaim. He’s the type of guy who can do it all, so perhaps that’ll give him a fighting chance?

Why He Might Not Win:

That older gentleman who gave Terrence Malick “shit” is a lock.

Previous Nominations: 4

Previous Wins: 0

Jonah Hill, Moneyball 

Why He Was Nominated:

This was a new type of performance from Hill, something most people, especially older folk, wouldn’t expect from him. Hill showed off some great dramatic chops in Cyrus, but that performance was overlooked, awards-wise. Moneyball was a through and through crowd-pleaser, and Hill’s presence is a part of the reason why.

Why He Might Win: 

The Academy decides to show some appreciation for understated performances, one that doesn’t deal with shouting, crying, or overcoming a major life obstacle. Further more, maybe they’ll recognize that plenty of Hill’s dialogue involves discussing statistics and trades, which isn’t usually the most exciting topics for conversation. Hill, thanks to the wonderful rapport he struck with Pitt, infused energy and charm into Aaron Sorkin’s and Steve Zaillian’s already lively dialogue.

Why He Might Not Win:

On the showy performance scale, this ranks the lowest out the nominees. Hill’s role did not rely on grand emotions. He just played an average guy doing a job, which isn’t the type of performance that wins awards, let alone get nominated, as often as it should. Also, the guy from Priest and Dracula 2000 is going to win.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Why He Was Nominated:

The breakdown scene. I’m calling it now, that is the clip the Academy will show.

Why He Might Win:

Nick Nolte’s respected. Everyone knows his past and could talk about how personal the role is for him. Nolte gives the type of old school and loud performance the Academy loves. There’s the tears, the yelling, and the sorrowful regrets, a.k.a. the depressing adjectives award show voters eat up.

Why He Might Not Win:

Look no further than the next listed nominee…

Previous Nominations: 3

Previous Wins: 0

Christopher Plummer, Beginners 

Why He Was Nominated:

Everyone loves Christopher Plummer, and there’s nothing not to love about the performance he gives in Beginners. Whether you’re a fan of Mike Mills’ film or not, just about everyone has recognized Plummer’s work as being nothing short of beautiful.

Why He Might Win:

There is no “might” or “maybe” when it comes to Plummer, he’s going to win. There’s no doubt about it. He’s been cleaning house at every other awards show to date, and with charm , style, and class. When Plummer gets up to that podium, everyone is prepared for a slice of witty and heartfelt remarks. Who wouldn’t want to see him do that while wielding an oscar in hand?

Why He Might Not Win:

The apocalypse happens right before the show…or the Westboro Baptist Church pops up to protest his performance and decides to burn down the Kodak theater. There’s a 50/50 chance of both these events.

Previous Nominations: 2

Previous Wins: 0

Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 

Why He Was Nominated:

Sydow’s nomination, most likely, comes down to his legendary status and how he gives a silent performance. The character’s silence is a half-baked idea in the film, but Sydow did manage to overcome weak material.

Why He Might Win:

Someone sabotages the show? Who knows, maybe there’s more fans of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close than we all assume. Most of the voters are older white men, and this film definitely plays to that crowd. If there is anything worth rewarding to this adaptation, it’s to Sydow.

Why He Might Not Win:

Once again, General Chang has this one in the bag. Need another reason? Well, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close not being particularly good certainly doesn’t help Sydow’s case. It’s a divisive film, with only a few lovers and defenders at its side. If Stephen Daldry’s drama was unanimously adored, then Sydow would have been a real threat in this category.

Previous Nominations: 2

Previous Wins: 0

Complete Academy Awards Coverage

The Best Foreign Language Film category is an odd one in that most movie-goers (and probably most Academy members too) haven’t actually seen many of the nominees. Or in some cases, any of the nominees. They’re subtitled for one thing, which is enough to turn off some people, but the bigger issue is that they also aren’t usually readily available.

For the record, the true Best Foreign Language Film of the year wasn’t even nominated. Well, one of the two best wasn’t even nominated, and the other one is going to win. The Kid With a Bike deserves a spot on the stage, and while I wouldn’t be able to choose between it and the film that’s actually going to win it would have been nice to see it honored. So why isn’t in on the list of nominees? Because its home country, Belgium, chose to submit something else instead.

The nominees are listed below with my prediction for the winner in red…

Bullhead (Belgium)

Why It Was Nominated:

Because Drafthouse Films can be very convincing.

Why It Might Win:

The presence of Michael R. Roskam’s beef hormone/mafia drama on this list came as a surprise to some, but it’s easy to see the attraction. Matthias Schoenaerts’ imposing but wounded lead performance is undoubtedly the core appeal here as he manages to create an oddly attractive antihero with his ripped appearance and damaged interior. He casts a powerful hold over the entire film that takes grip and rarely lets go. This category also has a history of going to the thriller genre with recent winners like The Secret In Their Eyes, The Counterfeiters, The Lives of Others, and Tsotsi.

Why It Might Not Win:

Schoenaerts’ presence and performance support an argument for a Best Actor nomination, but is it enough to warrant recognizing an entire film? And anyone who also sees The Kid With a Bike should come away feeling that Belgium put their wrong film forward.

Footnote (Israel)

Why It Was Nominated:

Because stories about conflict are new to Israeli cinema.

Why It Might Win:

This film about a father/son rivalry manages to highlight both the dramatic tensions as well as the lighter, more comedic side of family relations, the higher education system and the Talmud. It’s probably the most purely entertaining of the nominees too which is a refreshing change of pace from the norm.

Why It Might Not Win:

As with Monsieur Lazhar below there’s the real issue of Academy members not giving due respect to comedies. And be honest, who doesn’t want to see Israel’s overreaction when they lose to Iran?

In Darkness (Poland)

Why It Was Nominated:

Because Holocaust films are like catnip to Academy members.

Why It Might Win:

Seriously, the Academy loves them some Holocaust films. It doesn’t even have to be a good movie, as evidenced by Roberto Benigni’s win for Life Is Beautiful. (What ever happened to that guy anyway? Exactly.) This is strong human drama that shows us humanity at its worst and its unintended best. If the film that should win is defeated it will be by this dark but ultimately uplifting glimpse into history.

Why It Might Not Win:

The critically beloved steamroller that is A Separation should be enough to keep this film from winning on Sunday night. Two other far less influential reasons though could be that it’s the longest of the five films (clocking in at 145 minutes) and currently has the lowest IMDB user rating as well.

Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)

Why It Was Nominated:

Because it’s too easy to forget Canada even exists.

Why It Might Win:

Canada is the only one of the five countries represented here to have won previously (2003′s The Barbarian Invasions), so that sets a precedent of sorts. This is tied with Footnote as the lightest of the five films in tone and atmosphere, and sometimes after a hard day’s work you’d rather watch a comedy than a drama that reminds you of your daily grind in the beef hormone business.

Why It Might Not Win:

The same two reasons…but from a flipped perspective. A win for any of the other four would be a first for the respective nation, and a voter could be forgiven for wanting to spread the wealth. And comedies in general have a hard time at the Academy Awards where voters seem to appreciate drama, heartache and serious themes above all else.

A Separation (Iran)

Why It Was Nominated:

Because the sanctions might not work.

Why It Might Win:

Writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s excellent relationship drama has received the highest number of accolades of any of the nominees, but more importantly it deserves all of the praise and the eventual win. Beyond simply being a smart, beautifully acted ‘he said/she said’ drama this movie offers an eye-opening look into a world most people simply don’t know about. Our idea of Iran is shaped by the nightly news, but Farhadi’s movie shows us the real people who populate the country and may surprise some with the revelation that they’re actually pretty damn similar to the rest of us.

Why It Might Not Win:

A grand Zionist conspiracy or the intervention of the Jewish cabal who totally don’t run Hollywood could throw a wrench onto the dolma platter.

Complete Academy Awards Coverage

When you really think about it, Eastbound and Down is one of the HBO’s most depressing shows — no small feat. The hero’s journey Kenny Powers has been wandering through gets sadder and sadder with each season, as the character falls hard from the top, unlikely to ever obtain the glory he once had. This show challenges its characters to the fullest, and that’s something Jody Hill, David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the rest of the creative team behind Eastbound and Down seem to revel in.

Not many television characters can match the sheer narcissism, misogyny, delusion, sadness, and hilarity of Kenny Powers. Somehow, the worse he acts, the more human and oddly lovable Hill & Co. make him. Powers is about as anti-heroic as a television character can get.

Here’s what Jody Hill had to say about what we can expect from season three, the highs and lows of Kenny Powers’ arc, Stevie Janowski’s warped coming-of-age Stevie story, and more:

What would you say the main goal is for this season?

Kenny is one step closer to the majors, and he’s playing in the minor leagues. He’s confident at any point he’s going to be called up to play in the majors. Ike Barinholtz, who plays a young Russian pitcher, kind of gets in the way of that. We’re following that story, but at the same time you’re following a family storyline as well, where Kenny is dealing with being a father. It’s like this fucked-up show meets a family drama!

[Laughs] I know you guys first saw the show as two seasons and knew exactly what you wanted. With a third season, did it change, how you initially saw Kenny’s arc?

We always saw it as a three-season show. We kind of knew where we were heading with the show. Now that we’re at the end, we’re debating whether or not to do more. I think all three of these seasons tell a really good story, and we kind of tell it like a movie, where you can’t really jump into the show wherever you want. Now that it’s coming to the end, if we could continue… I really like telling stories with Kenny Powers. We always wanted this to be a character piece, but it really feels like you could follow this character with whatever he deals with next in life. You know, we only saw it as three seasons, but who’s to say?

Have you shot the final episode yet?

Yes.

Say if this was the last season, would there be a sense of closure?

You know, we certainly tell the story we wanted to tell from the beginning. Like I said, it’s a character piece; I don’t want to give anything away, but it ends on… I’ll just say it’s about Kenny as a character in how it wraps up.

I understand. Going back to square one, what was the story you saw in Kenny that you all wanted to tell?

Well, we really wanted to tell something about a man who is basically a fallen hero. Sports, which we actually know nothing about, is the closest thing we have, in terms of how our world likes celebrity and athletes; those are the people everybody is fascinated with. We wanted to take a modern day hero and show what happens when he loses it all, and you start the quest with that. We wanted to follow him as he tries to get back that glory. It kind of follows the traditional structure of a hero’s journey, but it’s also flipping it, where it’s not the journey of becoming a hero; he’s already a hero, and that’s who you’re following.

Wouldn’t you say he’s only a hero in his eyes? Most characters on the show probably see him as a villain.

[Laughs] Yeah, I think that’s the twist. It is possible people see him as the villain, but villains also see themselves as villains.

Do you think the heroism comes from him not being malicious? He never comes off as trying to be bad.

Well, the hero in the story is strictly who you’re following on the quest. Looking at it that way, Kenny Powers is the hero. Our hero just happens to be a narcissist. He has all these issues he can’t get around. In Kenny Powers’ eyes, he’s on the right quest all the time. And it’s his own quest, which is the important one to him.

[Laughs] I’d say all your work follows these type of narcissistic characters who all see themselves as being very manly. What draws you to that type of character?

I don’t know. You know, I definitely see the similarities. I don’t know if I’d say Ronnie in Observe and Report is a narcissist, whereas Kenny Powers is totally an egomaniac. For awhile I think I was into people who… I don’t think people necessarily think of themselves as they really are. Everyone has big dreams and sees themselves as the hero of their own movie. It was kind of a fun experiment to take people who so obviously aren’t how they see themselves, and then show how they really are. I’m getting ready to do another movie soon, and it’s not that kind of thing. There’s an appeal to me of people who see themselves as the king of their own kingdom.

[Laughs] You meet people like that all the time.

[Laughs] Yeah. With Kenny, we also wanted to do a Southern character. There were a lot of things in addition to the hero thing, but we really wanted to take a Southern character and show the South you really don’t see. I feel, sometimes, when you see movies about the South, they’re either the dramas in the woods and all that kind of shit or just hillbillies in comedies, and I think there’s a mix of that with this strip mall culture you don’t see a lot. The idea of putting a former athlete into that world was pretty appealing as well. [Laughs]

[Laughs] There’s always a surprising amount of humanity in Kenny. How much do you draw from real life or things you’ve heard?

We steal from everywhere. Like, we’ll steal from our friends, ourselves, and obviously we’ll reference other movies as well. It all comes from somewhere else, I guess. I think a lot of the humanity Kenny has is due to the fact we take him seriously as a character, even with all his flaws. At the same time, Danny McBride gets that and is able to make Kenny Powers a real person that you can empathize with. I think a combination of that makes him understandable.

It’s basically a really dark drama [Laughs].

[Laughs] It’s kind of like if you took a drama and tried to put a bunch of dick jokes in there.

[Laughs] That’s a good way of putting it. I’d say Kenny is very much the antagonist of the show, with how he creates the main problems. How does that help the writing process, having a hero who creates his own conflict?

That absolutely helps. I think if narcissists aren’t in the midst of a drama, then they’re not comfortable in their own skin. Kenny being a former celebrity, a professional athlete, and having a classic case of a narcissistic personality disorder — when you put those together, he’s going to create his own drama. He’s never comfortable with where he is. The only way he could be comfortable is if everyone in the world was kissing his ass. Even when he had that, he wasn’t comfortable, so he had to create drama. [Laughs] He’s always going to be in the middle of something.

Without spoiling anything, when you started from scratch, did you see him as a character capable of getting back glory?

Well, I don’t want to say too much about that. I will say Kenny gets it in his own way, but I think that’s the idea: he’s always looking for the answer. He just can’t help to create more drama that pushes him further and further away from the answer.

Where do you see Stevie Janowski going? 

[Laughs] Stevie… when we first saw Stevie he was a teacher, but essentially he was a child. Like, he was a middle schooler. When Kenny Powers comes in his life, the first two seasons were basically High School for Stevie, where he first smoked weed and started to play. [Laughs] In a way, even though Stevie goes down a dark hole, Kenny kind of helps Stevie, in a fucked-up way. You know, I think Stevie’s journey, if you want to break it down, is him going from boy to man. Stevie is in a fucked-up coming-of-age story.

I watched some of the first season last night, and when you first saw Stevie he was in a great place; he had a good job and seemed happy. The toll Kenny has taken on him is kind of depressing. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah, you know, he always wanted what Kenny had. In high school, Kenny Powers was the fucking man, and Stevie wasn’t. It’s one of those “you don’t know what you got until it’s gone” type of things. I think Stevie never would have felt his life was better than Kenny Powers’. You see some of the repercussions of Stevie going down the rabbit hole. Also, I think it’s pretty funny. [Laughs]

[Laughs] You can just feel you guys torturing these characters, in a loving type of way. 

[Laughs] Yeah, you know, it’s that thing where, when you put your character in pain, all the good stuff feels more good.

[Laughs] They rarely seem to feel good on the show, though.

[Laughs] Well, I think they do. I think there are moments where they feel good, and we treat those moments as special. They actually mean more because of all the dark times for those guys, you know? When he says goodbye to Mexico, I mean… essentially, Mexico was a shit show, but he did make it through the minors and get to say goodbye to all his fucked-up friends down there. [Laughs] There is humanity at the end of the day, I think.

[Laughs] It’s a pretty small triumph. 

Of course, but, for Kenny Powers, it’s the most important thing he could have done: return from Mexico a hero and achieving his quest, which is what he did.

That’s a good point. When the show was pitched to HBO, did you say, “It’s a show about a narcissist doing bad things, and only bad things happen”?

[Laughs] I don’t even remember how we pitched it. I don’t think we went that deep, I think we just called him a former athlete who comes home to get a job teaching P.E. at middle school… and he’s a fucking asshole. [Laughs] That’s probably how we pitched it.

Does how you work on Eastbound differ from working on features? Like, what you do on the show and what you did with Observe and Report isn’t exactly commercial. When you think of future projects, is the question of “Can this work for a big audience?” something you think about?

You know, I can’t say I ever sit there and think about the commercial side of things. Like, I won’t think, “Oh, I’ll do this because this is what people want to see!” Although, I want to be a craftsman, where I can make things people hopefully are watching. I don’t think, “I’ll do this because it’ll reach a bigger audience.” Like, Observe and Report is one of those movies; when it came out, it certainly wasn’t a commercial success. When it’s all said and done, I think it broke even, which is good. [Laughs] I do think that movie has had a pretty good shelf life.

I think the one thing that we’ve found with TV is that everything doesn’t rely on a big box-office. Like, we have time finding the character and letting him grow. Can you imagine if Mad Men was a fucking movie? It’d be like, “Well, that was slow. Nothing happened!” [Laughs] When you watch something like that over the first season, you start to understand these characters. Like, you find interesting things about the smaller choices they make, and those take on an importance. You look forward to knowing them, and you feel like you do. I feel that’s the one thing I’ve enjoyed about TV: people have the time to be shocked over Kenny Powers, and then you have time to let go of it and love him later on.

When you were working on Observe and Report, say after test screenings, wouldn’t you have to think of how an audience was going to respond?

Yeah, it was weird. You know, that movie can only be one thing. I did a cut of that movie, and we tested it and scored on the “just above average” line. They were like, “Oh, we can do better! Here’s a few notes.” I did their notes and took out a couple of things, just to try it out. The scores dropped, so they gave more notes. I tried them out, and then the scores plummeted. It was almost like, the more you tried to make that movie accessible, the more crappy it became.

In the end, I was like, fuck this and I did exactly what I wanted it to be. It was basically like the first cut, except a little better because I had more time to work on it. The scores came back up to almost the exact fucking number we got from the first screening, and that’s the cut that got out there. [Laughs] I guess I got my way, my director’s cut! It wasn’t easy and I had to fight on it, but Warner Bros. was supportive on that movie. They really loved it. I think that’s the only studio in town that would support a movie like that. I got lucky on getting that cut out there, with how weird the movie is.

Did that experience inform where you wanted to go next with a feature?

You know, that movie wasn’t a bad experience, making it. I think next time I just want to make something different. I don’t think I’m going to do a comedy next. I like some of the action and drama of it, and it informed where I wanted to go, on an artistic level. Like, not a budgetary or studio level.

Do you ever see yourself doing a movie about nice people? [Laughs]

Maybe one day [Laughs]. You know, who’s to say? I don’t really know what I’m doing. If I find something interesting, then I’ll just kind of work on it. Maybe if I have a kid or something one day, maybe I’ll do something for him. I’ll just write something really shitty one day. [Laughs]

[Laughs] I hope not. The last time we spoke you said you wanted to do The Godfather set in the South. Is that an idea you’re still working on?

You know what? I’m going to be working on that, but it’s not going to come off at all like it sounds. I did a bunch of research into that Southern crime group. Once I got into it I couldn’t figure out how to crack it, because the guys were such fucking assholes. [Laughs] It wasn’t like The Godfather, where there’s this cool structure or a hierarchy of this family, and all that kind of shit. These guys were just assholes and rednecks, so I couldn’t crack it. I came up with a different kind of a movie that’s set in a similar world as that, and another idea sprang off that. I can’t tell you what the new movie is because I just closed the deal, but it’s kind of in that world.

That’s good to hear. A few months ago I spoke with David Gordon Green, who said all characters are likable when you get to know them. Do you approach Kenny and your other characters with the same approach?

Yeah, I feel like David feels. I feel Kenny is human, and I think that’s why people are able to watch Kenny. With all his bullshit, he ultimately is just a really flawed human. We have fun with him and make fun of him, but… it’s like, have you ever taken a trip with someone you don’t know or where you think, “Oh, I don’t know about this guy”? They might be an asshole at the end of the day, but after spending three days in the car with this guy, you weirdly understand why he’s an asshole. You think, “Well, he’s an asshole, but I still kind of like the guy,” and that’s how I think about these “asshole” characters.

Eastbound and Down airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on HBO.

Film directors are responsible for every single aspect of their movie. That doesn’t mean they actually do each and every task on set, but it’s their job (and prerogative) to get each element just right. It’s a lot of responsibility, and judging by the nominees for this year’s Best Director, it’s clearly too much for a woman to handle. Sorry, Kelly Reichardt, Lynn Ramsay, and Sarah Polley…maybe you can bake something nice for the boys who were nominated?

For the record, the director who should walk away with the Oscar this year isn’t even nominated. Nicolas Winding Refn deserved (at least) a nomination for Drive as he was able to craft something of raw beauty from some seemingly disparate parts. The film’s look and style, its exquisitely jarring shifts from calm to explosive, and its unexpectedly affecting score and soundtrack all make for a unique cinematic experience.

The nominees are listed below with my prediction for the winner in red…

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius)

Why He Was Nominated:

Because Hazanavicius’ film reminded Academy members of the silent movies they loved as children.

Why He Might Win:

The Artist has dominated award ceremonies leading up to the Oscars, and Hazanavicius has already picked up seven awards as Best Director including the one from the Director’s Guild of America. That’s fairly telling, though far from definitive, and the momentum seems to be pointing in a repeat here.

Why He Might Not Win:

The film is the odds on favorite to take home the Best Picture award, and the Academy often splits the difference on their two favorites by giving one Best Pic and the other Best Director. There may also be the sense among voters that the film’s success is due more to Jean Dujardin’s charming performance and Ludovic Bource’s omnipresent score.

Previous Nominations: 0

Previous Wins: 0

The Descendants (Alexander Payne)

Why He Was Nominated:

Because Payne captures the gritty reality of “white man problems” better than most.

Why He Might Win:

Payne’s film struck a chord with audiences in its tale of love and responsibility, but more importantly his film is the only gimmick-free one on this list. It’s a movie for adults about real world adult issues that still managed to entertain the masses, and it didn’t require special effects or an artificial hook to succeed.

Why He Might Not Win:

As with The Artist above some people think Payne’s film rests on the talented and charming shoulders of its lead actor. That’s evident in the dozens of awards it’s already won, mostly for acting and adapted screenplay. Only one of them was for directing.

Previous Nominations: 5 (1 for Director, 1 for Picture, 3 for Adapted Screenplay)

Previous Wins: 1 (for Adapted Screenplay)

Hugo (Martin Scorsese)

Why He Was Nominated:

Because Scorsese’s eyebrows are even more impressive in 3-D.

Why He Might Win:

Hollywood loves itself more than anything (except money), and Scorsese is one of its most vocal supporters. He preaches film preservation and has crafted a movie that is all about the importance of cinema. Also, if the Academy does split the difference with The Artist as mentioned above Scorsese will be the one to benefit.

Why He Might Not Win:

If Academy voters are being honest with themselves they’ll acknowledge that Hugo‘s first act is an incomprehensible bore. Yes, things picked up nicely after that, but Scorsese really should have caught that 30-40 minute mess before releasing it to theaters. The ‘Best Director’ vote is open to all Academy members too, not just directors… were it still the other way around Scorsese’s well earned respect and standing may have nudged him towards a win. And an award here would be no more relevant than the career-award he won for 2006′s The Departed because it would be more about honoring his love for films and film history than this actual film.

Previous Nominations: 8 (6 for Director, 2 for Adapted Screenplay)

Previous Wins: 1 (for Director)

Midnight In Paris (Woody Allen)

Why He Was Nominated:

Because Allen gave Owen Wilson a reason to live.

Why He Might Win:

This is Allen’s 44th feature film, and it quickly became his highest grossing release of all time. That’s an incredible feat, and it may seem fitting to some to award him with only his second directing Oscar (after 1978′s beloved Annie Hall). The movie is also a love letter to fans of literature, and I think we can all agree that reading books is highly underrated.

Why He Might Not Win:

Allen’s odds seem pretty good in the Best Original Screenplay race, so the Academy may not feel it necessary to reward him here too. And the appeal of watching the Oscars is seeing the filmmakers mix and mingle and occasionally win awards, but the Academy knows Allen won’t even be there. So why give an award to someone who won’t even be on-hand and probably wouldn’t even prerecord one of those video acceptance speeches?

Previous Nominations: 21 (14 for Original Screenplay, 6 for Director, 1 for Actor)

Previous Wins: 3 (1 for Director, 2 for Original Screenplay)

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)

Why He Was Nominated:

Because Malick might just send a Native American to accept his award if he wins, and who doesn’t love Native Americans?

Why He Might Win:

The Tree of Life is a visual feast of stunning cinematography and solid CGI, and Malick ties it together with a very personal story about one family’s existence. His film is easily the most ambitious of any of the nominees, and that speaks to the director’s vision and control. There may also be something to the film being seen as “smart” cinema that no one wants to admit to not understanding. While Payne and Allen have zero chance here, Malick could potentially be the upset winner in this category.

Why He Might Not Win:

Malick is a Hollywood outsider, and while some respect him for that many may feel that his intentional distance from the “family” should be held against him. Some in this town full of heathens may also be conflicted over the film’s, and by extension Malick’s, apparent pro-Heaven message at the conclusion of his challenging film. Doesn’t he know that Hollywood is for liberal atheists only? And if we’re lucky there may just be enough voters who take umbrage at rewarding a two-plus hour screensaver with an Academy Award.

Previous Nominations: 2

Previous Wins: 0

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