The Screengrab : away from her

Sarah Polley Bottles a Genie

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

We thought the awards season was finally over, but as so often happens here at the Screengrab, we forgot all about our fine neighbors to the north. Yes, there are Canadian movie awards, too. They’re called the Genies, and they were handed out last night in Toronto. The big winners were Away From Her and Eastern Promises, each snagging seven Genies.

Sarah Polley’s directorial debut captured the top prizes: Away From Her won for best picture, director, actress (Julie Christie), actor (Gordon Pinsent), supporting actress (Kristen Thomson) and adapted screenplay (Polley again). According to the Globe and Mail, Pinsent had high praise for both Polley and Christie. “Julie also left me with a gift of some sort. We had this way too short canoodling love story, and before leaving the bed, she'd tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Well done, Gordon.' Well, that's on the resume.”

David Cronenberg’s latest cleaned up in many of the remaining categories, including original screenplay, supporting actor (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and original score (Howard Shore), among others. Eastern Promises executive producer Robert Lantos took the opportunity to comment on a pending amendment to the Canadian Income Tax Act that could limit government funding of controversial material, saying “this screenplay is chockfull of powerful, frank, honest, original scenes. Just the kind that, if some barbarians have their way, are no longer going to be permissible in Canadian cinema.”

On a lighter note, host Sandra Oh confirmed what we’ve long suspected: that everyone in Canada knows each other. “David Cronenberg, I played your wife in the movie Last Night. And Molly Parker, I dated your brother-in-law for three years. Totally true.”

Sarah Polley: "When It Comes to Films...You Should Always Be Ready to Struggle."

Phil Nugent — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

At twenty-nine, Sarah Polley is in a funny position as the writer-director of Away from Her. She's a first-time filmmaker who, as a child actress, has been involved in moviemaking for most of her life, and an actress who, as a director, will probably get to see her lead actress, Julie Christie, take home an Academy Award for a performance that she guided her through, after dragging her kicking and screaming out of semi-retirement. Speaking to John Horn of the Los Angeles Times, Polley makes it clear that, if she has an edge over most new directors, it's because she's spent enough time on film sets to know just how little she knows. Polley, who calls herself "the least-prepared person who has ever been nominated for an Academy Award," says, "I've spent a lifetime working with disorganized first-time filmmakers who don't get the support of their crew because they feel they are wasting their time. And I knew how badly I needed their support. You know as an actor so acutely what destroys morale, what creates complaints, and that can be good and bad, because when you're directing you can become hyper-aware of that. I think that what a lot of first-time filmmakers don't realize is that they are the least experienced person on that set. Everybody else has been doing their job for years, so the whole act of playing the filmmaker, playing the person in command, is a charade. So the best you can do is work your ass off and admit what you don't know and ask for help when you need it."

One of the most striking scenes in Away from Her, a love story (based on Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Went Over the Mountain") about a long-married couple (Christie and Gordon Pinsent) who are torn apart by the wife's descent into Alzheimer's, comes when a young nurse named Monica (Nina Dobrev) suddenly interrupts the husband, chips in her two cents, and then slips gracefully back behind her mask of nonjudgemental concern. That was one of the few additions that Polley made to Munro's text. "That was my entrance into the subject matter," she says now. "That's sort of me, as someone half the age of these people, looking up to these people: not quite understanding how they got there, being in awe of them, being curious about them. There's a kind of presumption in making a film about people who have an experience that is so far beyond your own that I felt like I needed to make that my connection somehow." Polley may have already felt there was an element of presumption in her begging Munro to let her film the story, and trying to get Christie to appear in it. "It felt like the bane of my existence were these women who were older than me and I was chasing them. I had some Freudian analysis of it, to do with the fact that I lost my mother when I was young and I'd created a life for myself where I was chasing these maternal figures around the world, begging them to be a part of my life."

Screengrab Bets The Oscars: Scott’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

My colleague Mr. Leonard Pierce has thrown down the gauntlet, so now it’s up to me to pick it up and swat him about the face with it. Don’t get me wrong, Leonard is a good friend and well-meaning individual, but he is also a very crazy person with some very crazy Oscar picks. If you want to win your office pool, you need to stick with me.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Here we go by the double nomination rule. There is no chance Cate Blanchett will win for her lead role in Elizabeth II: Electric Boogaloo, so her performance as Bob Dylan…er, excuse me, Jude Quinn should bring home the gold this year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

There is no safer bet this year than Javier Bardem winning for his chilling turn in No Country for Old Men. Let’s just hope he remembers to thank his hairdresser.

BEST ACTRESS:

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know anything about Away from Her or Julie Christie’s performance in it. I do know she’s already won a bunch of awards for it, however, and I don’t see any reason for that to change now.

BEST ACTOR:

Daniel Day-Lewis will drink George Clooney’s milkshake! He will drink it up!

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Atonement is a prestige literary adaptation, but I’m not sensing any momentum (or Atonementum, if you will). There Will Be Blood is adapted from the first part of a book nobody has read. Cormac McCarthy is the big name here, and even if No Country for Old Men isn’t his most acclaimed work, there’s no denying it was adapted about as well as could be imagined; it’s my pick.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

The backlash to the Juno backlash will begin once Diablo Cody takes home this award, followed shortly by the backlash to the backlash backlash.

BEST DIRECTOR:

I don’t see any candidates strong enough to take this one away from the Coens. They look like the grand old men of cinema next to P.T. Anderson, and the remaining nominees are horses ranging from dark (Gilroy) to darkest (Reitman).

BEST PICTURE:

Don’t make me use the term Atonementum again. The big enchilada is going home with No Country for Old Men.

Screengrab Bets The Oscars: Leonard's Picks

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

With the 80th annual Academy Awards less than two weeks away, and with the WGA strike apparently near its end (assuring that there actually will be an Oscar ceremony, and not just a handful of star-struck entertainment journalists trying to figure out who the TelePrompTer works), it's time for us here at the Screengrab to suck it up. It's time for us to do what every other film writer in the world, self-respecting or otherwise, is doing, and lay down our picks for the big to-do. Since I've always had a knack for making a jackass out of myself on the internet, I'll be the first: under the cut, you'll find my picks for who deserves to take home a statuette come Oscar night in eigh different categories, and who's going to walk away with the gold, regardless of merit. Over the next thirteen days, I'm hoping my Screengrab colleagues will join me in this endeavor, and then, come March, at least one of us can strut around talking about how smart we are.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

There's a fine crowd of candidates this time around, and it's hard to pick a winner — there's no obvious failings just as there's no obvious standouts. All told, Cate Blanchett should win for her turn as Dylan in I'm Not There, but I'm predicting it will actually end up in the hands of Amy Ryan for the surprising Gone Baby Gone.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

If, as I'm predicting, the Coen Brothers are shut out again this year, that means even more that Javier Bardem should win for his performance as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. However, given his spate of terrific roles towards the end of the year, I'm predicting it will go to Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson's War.

BEST ACTRESS:

Ellen Page surely deserves recognition for the breakout performance she delivered in Juno, and there's a slight possibility she'll get it. However, I think the Academy will go the other direction — since Hal Holbrook won't be getting an old-timer's award, Julie Christie will take home the gold for the little-seen Away from Her.

BEST ACTOR:

Although there's an off chance that George Clooney will take home the gold, I'm picking Daniel Day-Lewis' colossal performance in There Will Be Blood as both my should-win and will-win. Past performance and academy voting patterns be damned: it's a towering, masterful job of acting that carries the entire movie.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Traditionally, the screenplay categories are the thanks-for-playing awards for the year's best movies, but which for whatever reason aren't going to get one of the big awards. As such, it's a dead heat between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and my money's on Paul Thomas Anderson this year.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

If ever there are a sold-gold, lead-pipe lock in the history of solid-gold, lead-pipe locks, it's Diablo Cody winning Oscar gold this year for Juno. Bet the farm on it.

BEST DIRECTOR:

For filmmakers as talented and distinctive as the Coen Brothers never to have won an Oscar is a crime, but this isn't their Departed year. They'll be shut out again, though, leaving open the question of who gets it. P.T. Anderson seems obvious, but I'm gonna say this is a divisive year and Tony Gilroy takes it for Michael Clayton.

BEST PICTURE:

If Juno wins, the very balance of nature will be forever thrown askew. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are the most deserving, but are perceived as overly nihilistic and grim. Michael Clayton could be the winner by default, but I think it'll go to Atonement, the very definition of an Academy prestige picture.

Screen Actors' Guild Awards

Phil Nugent — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The fourteenth annual Screen Actors Guild Awards were handed out Sunday night, in a brisk televised program that the striking Screen Writers' Guild gave its blessing to. This year's awards got perhaps a bit more attention than usual in this season, when the writers' strike turned the Golden Globes into a glorified press conference and threatens to do we know not what to the Academy Awards show. Dignified yet friendly, the evening struck a nice balance between this year's gutted-out version of the Golden Globes and the bedazzled vulgarity of the traditional Oscar blow-out, which helped to compensate for the fact that the list of chosen winners didn't have a lot of surprises. Among the movie nominees, There Will Be Blood's Daniel Day-Lewis took the Best Actor prize, which he dedicated to the late Heath Ledger. Julie Christie (Away from Her won for Best Actress, while awards for Best Supporting performance went to Javier Bardem (for No Country for Old Men) and Ruby Dee (for American Gangster). The SAG Awards also set aside awards for Best Cast Ensemble and Best Stunt Ensemble: these went to the fine actors who appeared together in No Country for Old Men and those motherfucking lunatics who risked life and limb while giving the finger to gravity itself in The Bourne Ultimatum, respectively. In the television category, the most notable awards were those slathered on the cast of The Sopranos, in its last year: the show won for Best Actor (James Gandalfini), Best Actress (Edie Falco), and Best Dramatic Cast Ensemble. The cast of The Office won for Best Cast in a comedy, but the awards for Best Actor and Actress in a comedy went to Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, both of 30 Rock. Fey got off perhaps the most gracious one-liner of the evening when she credited Baldwin with her win, saying that if you spend enough time watching "Fred Astaire dance with a hatrack; after a while, you’re, like, ‘That hatrack is pretty good too.’ ”

Academy Awards Also-Rans

Phil Nugent — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Now that the Academy Award nominations have been announced, we can all buckle up and wait to find out who the lucky non-winners are. Don't get us wrong: an Oscar win has a lot to recommend it. It bestows upon the recipient not just bragging rights but a new, higher pay ceiling and, if he doesn't screw it up the way Kevin Spacey did, a privileged glow and a long-term shot at juicier roles. But as anyone who's spent ten minutes reading about Cary Grant or Alfred Hitchcock knows, there's nothing that sets a major Hollywood figure apart like never having won an Oscar — that is, a real Oscar, and none of that special lifetime career achievement bullshit. Then, every time someone writes a profile of you, they can set aside a moment to tear their hair out over the fact that you never got the big prize — and everyone, including the people who'd never given it a second's thought before, will automatically do you the honor of agreeing that, yes, it is a shocking thing now that you mention it. In recent years, the sudden realization that Paul Newman and Martin Scorsese, to name two examples, had never won Oscars set off palpitations in the entertainment media, and cries went out urging the Academy to do the right thing, to make sure that they did not go to their graves un-Oscared, even if it meant honoring, by association, such lesser works as The Color of Money and The Departed. It's hard not to feel that, by finally joining what sometimes seems to be the majority, these men lost a little something that had previously set them apart from the likes of Red Buttons, Cliff Robertson, Roberto Begnini. One would think that Scorsese, with his ravenous enthusiasm for obscure and neglected filmmakers whose posthumous reputations glow with the luster one associates with misunderstood genius, would get this as much as anyone, but the lure of the little gold statuette is a powerful one. Let's take a moment to honor some of the people who will have to content themselves with asking Marty how it feels to hold one.

BEST ACTOR: Except for Johnny Depp and Viggo Mortensen, all the nominees here are already lost souls, with Oscars already stashed in the broom closet. Still, George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones have only won for Best Supporting Actor in the past, so I'm sure it would feel a little special if they were able to corral one for being top banana. (Jones's nomination is also notable for being the only direct evidence included in the list of nominations that there was something this past year called "movies about the Iraq war.") Notable among the missing: Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey, Jr. of Zodiac, two very fine performances that could just as easily have been shoehorned into the Supporting Actor category, but which had the misfortune to have been included in a movie that really took it on the chin for having been released early in the year. (The Academy has traditionally favored movies that were released late in the year and so were fresh in the minds of voters, a tradition that the development of home video has done surprisingly little to reverse.) The Academy did reach back to movies released in the first half of 2007 in order to bestow a Best Actress nomination on Julie Christie for her work in Away from Her, but Gordon Pinsent, who had to carry that picture, and whose performance was equally fine, was slighted, which may have something to do with the fact that no Academy voters have fond memories of having used a picture of him torn from the pages of Vogue to help them get through puberty thirty years ago. Similarly, Will Smith's performance in I Am Legend, a movie that he was obliged to keep alive single-handedly for long stretches, was in its way every bit as impressive a feat of movie-star acting as Clooney's glamorously world-weary turn in Michael Clayton, but he was in a movie about fighting rabid vampires, whereas Clooney was in one about reaching deep down into the pit of one's soul and learning to say no to the forces of evil, represented by a bunch of lawyers who could easily be taken for rabid vampires if you squint.

BEST ACTRESS: It's really no surprise that one of the most remarkable performances seen this year, that of Molly Shannon in Year of the Dog, isn't here: the movie was, again, released a very long time ago, it wasn't a hit, and in the ranks of people remembered for having been on Saturday Night Live, Shannon is probably closer to Chris Farley's side of the scale than Bill Murray's in the public mind. That could change if she gives many more performances like this one, but God knows where she's going to find the roles. It's a bit more surprising that Angelina Jolie's A Mighty Heart has sunk without a trace; it's not the best performance of the year, nor is it Jolie's best performance, but in a year that, as usual, was not overflowing with instances of women being given the chance to strut their stuff in big, juicy parts, you might think that Jolie's lending whatever muscle she has a movie star to telling the story of Daniel Pearl's widow would get her a token nod. Maybe all the factors that it had going against it — released in the summer, box-office failure, heavy subject matter, plus the mixed feelings that so many people seem to have about Jolie (is she a star, or a tabloid freak?) created a kind of perfect storm. Ashley Judd's wild-eyed, insane sexy mama in the off-Broadway sort-of-horror picture Bug was something to see. I don't know if the studio even bothered to send out screener copies to Academy voters, though if they were on the fence about it, I'd have chipped in for the cost of the postage, just so I could fantasize about how many of them would end up calling in priests to exorcise their DVD players.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Chris Cooper punted two good shots the Academy's way, first with his creepy performance as treasonous spook Robert Hanssen in Breach, then with an excellent demonstration of the character actor functioning as secret star in the big action flick The Kingdom, but the Academy passed on both. Steve Zahn was amazing and heartbreaking as a doomed P.O.W. in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn; he didn't get nominated either, but just last week he was amazing again, effortlessly channeling Robert Duvall as the young Gus McCrae in the Lonesome Dove prequel, so maybe the Emmys will make it up to him later. Jeff Daniels' straight-talking blind man in The Lookout deserved more attention than it got, and Clarence Williams III made a solid meal of about two (uncredited) scenes as Bumpy Johnson in American Gangster. (Ruby Dee did get nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Denzel Washington's mother in that movie. Her performance isn't nearly as rich as Williams', but she's certainly due for a little attention, and maybe the Academy figured, regarding her and Williams, that it was either one or the other.) The funny thing is that the category is padded out with people — Casey Affleck, Javier Bardem — who got enough screen time in their movies to qualify as lead actors. Bardem's Supporting Actor status feels like it's rigged to make it easier for him to claim the award, though I'd look for a late surge to form behind Hal Holbrook after people realize that he's not only nominated but actually still alive and capable of being cheered by a win.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: I don't get the universal consensus that Cate Blanchett was a supporting actress in I'm Not There. I guess that, again, it comes down to amount of screen time, but nobody else in that movie had any more screen time than she did; certainly nobody else put theirs to as good a use. I probably wouldn't mind so much except that, by shoving her into this category for her phenomenal performance, it feels as if the Academy is shafting Amy Ryan, nominated for a hair-raisingly skanky performance as a bad mother for the ages in Gone Baby Gone, and Tilda Swinton, whose completely reprehensible and yet completely understandable corporate villain gave Michael Clayton a surprising amount of its soul. A little tinkering might have left room for Marisa Tomei, who in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead made Philip Seymour Hoffman's faithless wife convincingly empty and slow-witted and shallow in her dissatisfaction with her existence, yet still made her seem very much worth screwing up your life over. This would have also been the place to honor little Nina Kervel-Bey, who made one of the year's most remarkable debuts in the French film Blame It on Fidel. She's actually the star of the movie, but from Tatum O'Neal to Abigail Breslin, the Academy has traditionally shoved little girls into the Best Supporting Actress category, as if "supporting" were synonymous with "short." Appearances to the contrary, Ellen Page turns twenty-one next month, so her nomination in the Best Actress category (for Juno) does not break this trend. It would have been nice, though, if Page's co-star Jennifer Garner could have been sandwiched in here. In The Kingdom, Garner is still trying to prove herself as an action heroine, with mixed results, but she gave the performance of her career so far in Juno — a carefully nuanced performance and a brave one, one that depended for its (and the movie's) full effectiveness on the actress's willingness to slowly open up to the audience and reveal what's on the inside of a woman who has the shell of a frosty yuppie robot.

BEST DIRECTOR: The fun in this category has usually been in thinking about how it feels to be the one director who wasn't nominated even though his movie was nominated as Best Picture. However he may laugh it off in public, you know that the message he thinks he's getting is, "And last but not least, nominated for Best Picture in spite of having been directed by..." This year it is the director of Atonement, the esteemed young filmmaker what's-his-name, who has to wonder if everybody thinks the actors built the sets while he was in the bathroom and came up with their blocking while he was at lunch. Suffice to say that Julian Schnabel, the director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, fills out the category just fine, though it might be even finer if, say, Jason Reitman had somehow been overlooked in favor of Zodiac's David Fincher. Another surprisingly plausible contender might have been Ben Affleck, who sure did a hell of a lot better job behind the camera on Gone Baby Gone than he's ever done in front of it. Affleck may not have the face of a director — that's a compliment, Ben — but I'm in favor of anything that encourages him to stay back there.

Paul Clark Predicts the Oscar Nominees

Paul Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"Nobody knows anything." Screenwriter William Goldman immortalized that phrase a few decades ago, and it's as true this Oscar season as it's always been. Perhaps even more so — not only are many Oscar races still wide-open, but the status of the ceremony itself is up in the air. But for now the show is still happening, which means the nominations are set to be announced tomorrow morning. Here are my hasty, shot-in-the-dark predictions in the top six categories:

Best Picture:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men

I think we can all agree that No Country is in, right? Beyond that, it's something of a crap shoot. Michael Clayton is the kind of classy star vehicle the Academy usually responds to, and audience favorite Juno has become too big a word of mouth phenomenon to ignore. At one point, Atonement was looking like a front-runner for the win, but its Oscar buzz has subsided. On the other side of the coin, There Will Be Blood may be too bleak for the voters to embrace — it would have a better chance were it the year's undisputed critical champ, but with No Country in the mix, PTA's masterpiece could be shut out here. Instead, I'm predicting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an acclaimed true-life story that's only gaining momentum, and Into the Wild, the year's most Oscar-baity film directed by a respected actor, which is something that tends to go over well with the actor-filled Academy membership.

Best Actor:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Even if the Academy decides to overlook There Will Be Blood, they won't be able to deny the awesomeness of Day-Lewis' blazing performance as Plainview. Likewise, Clooney and Depp have recently become Academy favorites, and I dare say that had Sweeney Todd done more business Depp would've been the one to beat here. Hirsch is a bit iffier here given his age, but he carries Into the Wild on his capable shoulders, and if the film gets nominated I'm guessing he will be too. With the recent groundswell for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I think Matthieu Amalric should be seen as a contender here, although not nearly as much as if he was an American star. Instead, I'm going with Mortensen — Eastern Promises didn't exactly set the world on fire, but his performance was the highlight, and I think voters will take the opportunity to honor him not only for this role but also for his overlooked turns in A History of Violence and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Best Actress:
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Ellen Page, Juno

Throughout this awards season, three names kept popping up in this rare — Christie, Cotillard, and Page. So it's pretty safe to assume they'll make it in. That leaves us two spots in a relatively weak year for buzzed-about performances (sadly, Black Book's Carice Van Houten has no traction whatsoever). With very little competition, Jolie should make the cut — the film didn't make much of a dent, but her stardom has kept her in the race. The final spot is anyone's guess. High-profile star turns (Jodie Foster in The Brave One, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age) have flopped at the box office, while respected performers in independent films (notably Laura Linney in The Savages) have been lost in the year-end shuffle. That leaves Amy Adams in Enchanted, a star-making performance by a previous nominee in a hit movie that's still fresh in people's minds.

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

At this point, Best Director is the Coens' to lose. Even if someone else takes home Best Picture, I think it's still their year in this category. I also think the Directors Branch will be impressed by Sean Penn's metamorphosis into serious filmmaker, as well as Schnabel's unconventional, inspired filmmaking choices in Diving Bell. For this year's semi-obligatory non-Best Picture-nominated director, I'm predicting Anderson, a respected maverick whose filmmaking chops in There Will Be Blood are undeniable even if the film itself is too much for some audiences. Of the two remaining Best Picture nominees, I think Gilroy has the edge over Juno's Jason Reitman for two reasons: (1) crowd-pleasing comedies tend to get shut out of this category, and (2) Gilroy is a veteran screenwriter makes an impressive directorial debut. But don't be surprised if another "lone director" — say, Sidney Lumet for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, or Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd — gets the nod instead.

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

In a year without Bardem, this race might have come down to Grand Old Actor Holbrook vs. veteran character actor Wilkinson. But Bardem casts a long shadow over this category, with Chigurh the creepiest villain in an Oscar-feted film since Hannibal Lecter. Charlie Wilson's War wasn't the Oscar juggernaut that it was predicted to be, but I still think Hoffman's scene-stealing turn will make it in. I think this year's biggest surprise will be the absence of Casey Affleck's performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Affleck's the only serious competition Bardem has had among the precursor awards, but Jesse James was a box-office flop and Affleck's performance could give voters the willies. Max Von Sydow's affecting turn in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might have had a chance here — as a means of honoring one of the world's most esteemed actors and, by extension, his recently-departed longtime collaborator Ingmar Bergman — except that he might not have enough screentime to be a contender. Instead, I'm giving the edge to Jones, an Academy favorite who came roaring back this year to give two acclaimed performances after a decade's worth of commercial crap.

Best Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Catherine Keener, Into the Wild
Kelly MacDonald, No Country for Old Men
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Once again, three names keep popping up in this category: Blanchett, Ryan, and Swinton. I think they'll all get nominated, though who will win remains to be seen (early shot-in-the-dark prediction: a Swinton upset). The other two spots are less certain. But consider that, more than any other category, the Best Supporting Actress nominees are largely composed of performers who starred opposite other Oscar nominees. In this respect, I think contenders such as Ruby Dee in American Gangster, Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and especially Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, are at a disadvantage here. Instead, I'm predicting the fourth spot to go to Catherine Keener, getting her third nomination in this category for her moving turn in Into the Wild. The final slot comes down to Jennifer Garner in Juno and Kelly MacDonald in No Country for Old Men. Despite Garner's greater name recognition, I'm giving the edge to MacDonald, both for No Country's frontrunner status and for playing one of Oscar's favorite characters, the supportive, long-suffering wife. But honestly, it could go either way.

Watch for the Oscar nominations tomorrow, January 22. And remember, nobody knows anything.

Doug Liman Weighs His Options

Phil Nugent — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

A lot of big movie directors are adolescent geeks who get a style upgrade and an attitude adjustment after they achieve success — whatever you think of Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino now, believe it or not, before they had money and clout, they were worse — but a profile of Doug Liman in New York magazine is fascinating partly because Liman doesn't seem to have been changed much by his success. (Reporter Steve Fishman, on meeting with Liman at the director's production office: "Liman arrives late, as usual. As usual, he wears a T-shirt and jeans, though today he’s also got on a long fitted coat. 'You look good,' says an assistant. 'What's wrong?'") That success was long in coming. Liman was dependant on his father, Arthur Liman (the New York lawyer best known as the prosecutor in the Iran-Contra scandal), for financial support until he was able to direct his first film, Swingers, when he was thirty-one. Jon Favreau, who wrote and starred in the movie (with Vince Vaughn), had hoped to direct it himself, but was unable to secure funding; Liman got the money, again, from his father. (The deal that Liman cut with Miramax for the finished film made him a rich man, something that led to a temporary estrangement from Favreau.)

Since then, Liman has made one movie that straddled the indie world and Hollywood, and three films — The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and the forthcoming Jumper — that comprise what he calls "my sellout trilogy." You might think that Hollywood would love the bejesus out of this guy, who has shown an ability to freshen up commercial material in a way that has not only produced a string of hits but kicked off a major franchise in the Bourne series. But instead, Universal so hated Liman's behavior on the set of the first Bourne movie — which, in addition to his chaotic filming style, which inspires complaints from some that he seems disengaged rather than in charge, included a true uber-geek episode in which Liman "paid the crew overtime to light a forest so he could play paintball" at night — that they didn't do the customary turnabout that the industry routinely performs with troublesome directors and embrace him warmly when he delivered at the box office. Instead, when Brad Pitt wanted to do Mr. and Mrs. Smith for Universal, Liman claims that Pitt "was told he could pick any director he wanted except me." This had the predictable effect. Liman's actors do tend to end up in his rooting section. Matt Damon credits the director with saving his career with Bourne. And Sarah Polley, who starred in Go, won the New York Film Critics Circle's Best First Film prize for her direction of Away from Her, she asked Liman to be be her escort for the evening — though she couldn't resist telling him that he should do it because "It's the closest you’re ever going to get." Liman doesn't seem so sure. "I kind of lost my indie credibility over Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me."

Globes Without Glitter

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:43:00 GMT

The 65th annual Golden Globes were announced last night, getting the awards season off to a wobbly start. After much speculation about whether No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood might be the front runner as the Oscar race heats up, the Golden Globe for Best Drama went to the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement, a sturdy vote for respectable literary source material, period romance, and clipped accents in these confusing times. (Another perceived front-runner competition that's been heating up movie message boards, the one between Julie Christie in and Marion Cotillard in Ma Vie en Rose, was effectively defused in this round by the Globes' method of breaking up its movie categories into as many different sub-categories as possible: Christie won the award for Best Actress in a Drama, Cotillard won for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.) Daniel Day-Lewis did won for Best Actor in a Drama for his work in There Will Be Blood, while No Country took home prizes for Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem) and for its Coen brothers screenplay. The Best Director award went to Julian Schabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which also won for Best Foreign Language Film. Rounding out the big winners were Sweeney Todd (Best Musical or Comedy) and its star, Johnny Depp (Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy), Cate Blanchett (Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There), and Ratatouille (Best Animated Feature Film).

Of course, as the strike by the Writers' Guild of America drags on into its third month, the big question was whether there would be any awards ceremony or not. NBC, which had the rights to this year's presentation, grimly held to its plans to broadcast something, but it wasn't until last Friday that it was announced that union picketers would not show up to protest the event. By that time, most celebrities who might otherwise have attended had made other plans. The awards were given out, but in a press-conference-style format presided over by announcers from entertainment-news shows such as and Inside Edition. The winners will have news of their glad tidings duly Incorporated into the ads for those movies that are still playing, but the general feeling is that, compared to the impact of previous years' awards ceremonies, the whole thing was a wash. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films, laments that "you can’t replace having the clips and the people who made the films on television. It’s impossible to predict the impact of the lack of a full-on ceremony. But we are all in the same boat. No one will get an advantage.”

Top Ten of 2007: Phil Nugent

Phil Nugent — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

1. There Will Be Blood, directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson

A triumph of personal filmmaking, epic scale division, and an excellent argument that anyone who nominates anyone whose initials aren't D.D.-L. for the title of greatest living movie actor is a fool.

2. Killer of Sheep, directed and written by Charles Burnett

A triumph of personal filmmaking, garage-inventor division, and worth the thirty years' wait.

3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, from the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Set almost entirely behind the eyes of a paralyzed stroke victim, it is in just about every way the most adventurous movie in recent memory, Schnabel’s visual imagination, which is kinetic yet lyrical and charged with feeling, has somehow enabled him to make a movie that is a celebration of the pleasures (and a lament for the lost possibilities) of a life cut short that never feels bathetic.

4. The Host, directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Baek Chul-hyun and Bong Joon-ho

Big rubber monsters and real blood. In his previous film, the police procedural Memories of Murder, Bong demonstrated a special talent for treating genre conventions with satirical irony in a way that only heightened the story’s emotional impact. With its rude shocks, horse laughs, family of unlikely heroes and absolute lack of faith in the official protectors of society, his twist on the rampaging-mutant horror movie may be more fun than anything else seen this year.

5. Once, directed and written by John Carney

This small love story — Before Sunrise as a Dublin-set pop musical — is also the suspense film of the year: the first time you watch it, a part of you is on the edge of your seat, waiting for the inevitable wrong step that never comes. As perfect and buoyant as a soap bubble glistening in the sunlight.

6. Away from Her, directed and written by Sarah Polley, from a story by Alice Munro

As an actress, Polley has had the hint of something wise-beyond-her-time going on behind those heavy lids since before she was ten. Her directoral debut, about a marriage of some forty years’ duration that’s finally torn asunder by the wife’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, is an uncommonly mature romantic drama, and in many ways an uncommonly hard, clear-eyed one. Julie Christie’s mere presence as the unreadable, coquettish old woman lends the movie some star power, but Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis give risk-taking performances that keep the film raw and alive.

7. Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, written by Brad Bird.

An exhilarating triumph of sheer craft from the director of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, and a major return to form for Pixar after the sugared gas tank of Cars.

8. Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, written by Matt Greenhalgh and Deborah Curtis

An uncommonly solid, beautiful-looking rock-star biopic, with relative newcomer Sam Riley giving a bracingly unsentimental yet thoroughly winning performance as Ian Curtis of Joy Division. (In one of his few previous movie roles, Riley turned up briefly in 24 Hour Party People, playing Mark E. Smith of the Fall.) With its black and white cinematography (by Martin Ruhe and John Watson), its confident grasp of the period and its milieu, and its surprising bursts of humor, this is one of the rare films that threaten to give music video directors-turned-moviemakers a good name.

9. Knocked Up, directed and written by Judd Apatow

There are nits you could pick, but here’s what makes them all seem ridiculous: more quotable, genuinely funny lines and inspired, perfectly shaped jokes per square inch than in any movie since the last time somebody produced a script by — hell, I don’t know, John Guare, maybe? Alan Bennett? Ben Hecht!?

10. Year of the Dog, directed and written by Mike White

This is the first time that White has directed one of his own screenplays, and the results are confident and exciting enough in their strangeness to make one suspect that some of the earlier movies he wrote seemed shifty and half-baked because the directors weren’t as eager to turn convention on its head as White meant for them to. Molly Shannon is amazing as the frustrated, lonely spinster-in-the-making whose attempt to change her life is dotted with missteps and false starts but ends in triumph — triumph for her, at least, whether her friends (or the audience) can see it that way or not.