The Screengrab : before the devil knows you're dead

Reviews By Request: Shotgun Stories (2007, Jeff Nichols)

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Now that I’ve caught up with just about all of the major 2008 releases I’ve really wanted to, we’ll be going back to the old alternating-weeks format of Reviews By Request and Yesterday’s Hits starting next week. So, as before, I’ll be polling you folks to determine the first of two Oscar-themed Reviews By Request columns, which will run in two weeks. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

One of the better surprises among last week’s Oscar nominations was Michael Shannon’s nomination for best supporting actor in Revolutionary Road. Shannon has been acting in movies for well over a decade, but he first made an impression on me in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, in which his frayed-nerve intensity provided that ponderous film its only sign of life. Since then, Shannon has given vivid performances in Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and William Friedkin’s Bug, which along with Revolutionary Road have turned him into Hollywood’s go-to character actor for playing hyper-focused crazies. Shannon’s character in Jeff Nichols’ revenge drama Shotgun Stories might seem on paper to be another unhinged role, but in his capable hands it instead becomes his deepest and most complex performance.

Shannon plays Son, the eldest of three brothers living in a small southern town. Shannon’s character’s name is not a nickname, but rather the legacy of a drunken, uncaring father (his brothers are named Kid and Boy). That he wasn’t named Sue is no doubt of small consolation to Son, whose father left them “in the care of a hateful woman” only to sober up, find Jesus, start a second family and become an all-around productive member of the community. It’s at his father’s funeral that the story is set in motion, when Son and his brothers show up and speak out against the man who abandoned them. Son’s act of spitting on his father’s casket causes the long-simmering resentments between the father’s two families to escalate into an all-out feud.

Normally, the revenge movie isn’t one of my favorite genres, because most movies of the type either emphasize violent action in a way that makes me feel vaguely unclean, or engage in so much hand-wringing that the ethics overwhelm the storytelling. With Shotgun Stories, Nichols avoids falling into either trap. This isn’t a pumped-up thrill ride, but neither is it a pious anti-revenge screed. Instead, it’s a sad, low-key story of two families whose mutual hatred for each other overwhelms their better judgments. Making the story especially tragic is that those who fueled the hatred (the deceased father and the two mothers) don’t bloody their hands from the violence- it’s their sons who suffer from their parents’ misdeeds. As Son tells his mother, “you’ve taught us to hate those boys, and we do. And now it’s come to this.”

Key to the movie’s effect is its setting, an “empty-ass town” with few opportunities available to its residents. In its feel for small-town life, Shotgun Stories owes a debt to filmmakers like David Gordon Green, who executive-produced. Son and Kid work together in a fish hatchery, Boy coaches a youth basketball team, and Son’s hopes of bettering himself hinge on his perfecting a technique to scam the local casino. Son’s wife Annie has moved out of the house with their son, but it’s clear that she still loves Son despite all the disappointment she feels for him. There are moments of happiness to be found in these people’s lives, but this happiness is either fleeting (as when Boy rigs up a blender to his car battery so he can fix margaritas while watching the sun set) or bittersweet due to the difficulties they face. It’s telling that Kid is reluctant to propose marriage to his longtime girlfriend not because he doesn’t love her, but because he’ll have a hard time affording a ring and a place of their own.

In short, these aren’t the stone-cold killers who usually inhabit movies of this sort, so when the violence begins, it doesn’t play out quite the way we expect. At one point, a character purchases a shotgun to use against an enemy, only to realize that he needs lessons in how to assemble and use it. And rather than emphasizing the violence, Nichols focuses on its horrible aftermath, the irreparable damage it causes. For example, Nichols cuts away from a brutal fight that kills one brother on each side, lingering instead on a scene in which both families gather in the hospital, staring each other down from opposite ends of a long hallway.

And in the middle of it, there’s Shannon’s performance, almost certainly the best he’s given to date. It’s been said that intelligence is the ability to hold opposing viewpoints simultaneously, and much of Shannon’s talent is his ability to convey seemingly contradictory impulses in his character. On the one hand, he wants to protect his family and uphold its honor; on the other, he wants to prove to his wife that he can care for her. In theory, these two impulses aren’t so different (they’re simply different facets of his need to do the right thing), but in practice it’s much more complicated. It’s a burden that weighs heavily on Son, and what makes Shannon’s performance such a marvel is that he’s able to convey this burden with a minimum of dialogue or affect, and without resorting to actorly histrionics. With his other notable performances and now Shotgun Stories, Michael Shannon is quickly becoming one of my favorite character actors, and the news that he’s playing the lead role in an upcoming Werner Herzog film is very, very good news indeed.

As you’re all aware, the Oscar ceremony will be airing later this month, and in anticipation of the Academy Awards, I’ll be running special Oscar-themed features over the next four weeks. For my next Reviews By Request column, I’m asking you to choose from five Oscar-nominated favorites, none of which I’ve seen all the way through. So, which will it be?

Which should I write about next? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. See you in two weeks!

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like To See (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Ho! And also, ho-ho! Happy Festivus from all of us here at The Screengrab!

Last week, we shared some of our favorite cinematic comebacks of all time, but today the gifts we're really hoping to get are the following COMEBACKS WE'D MOST LIKE TO SEE IN 2009, starting with...

MARISA TOMEI

Is it generally accepted that Tomei is as good as she is? She won an Academy Award for her supporting performance in 1992's My Cousin Vinny, but, as also happened with Mira Sorvino (who was ridiculed for having won an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite) and Jennifer Tilly (who was teased just for having been nominated for Bullets Over Broadway), that achievement inspired some snickering from people who don't understand why you'd waste an award on someone in a comedy. Never mind that Tomei's performance in that movie, which gave audiences as much sheer pleasure as anything run through a projector that year, couldn't have been easy to pull off, or that it summed up as well as anything else she's done what a remarkable combination of brains and adorability she has as an actress. Devoted to working in the theater, and not averse to doing TV when the role is right, she takes long breaks between movie jobs, though she keeps her hand in enough that nobody refers to The Wrestler as her comeback picture. But only for a brief time, in the wake of her Oscar win, did she inspire filmmakers to place her at the center of a few starring vehicles (Untamed Heart, Only You, The Family Perez). From Vinny to In the Bedroom to last year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to The Wrestler, the bulk of her most striking movie work has consisted of supporting roles in which her character was defined by her relationship to a man who had more lines and more screen time. And almost any time when Tomei is in a movie but not onscreen counts as wasted time.

MICHAEL KEATON

Does Keaton have issues? As an actor, he's come an incredibly long way from his screen debut in Night Shift, where he was still basically doing stand-up comedy in character -- but ever since hanging up his Bat cape and apparently losing Tim Burton's contact information, he's bounced from role to role, seldom betraying any sign that he cares about sustaining a viable career. He did reportedly beg for his role in Jackie Brown, though he left less impact on the finished film than he did when, as a gag, he reprised the character for a surprise cameo in Out of Sight. He gave a startling performance as a genius-level sociopathic criminal in Desperate Measures, but the downside is that he gave it in Desperate Measures. He may just be a man with more talent than taste, but given his background, it is suprising that he doesn't attempt more comedies; maybe he felt stung after the commercial failure of the 1996 Multiplicity, an underrated film in which he played multiple roles and worked like a saint to keep all the movie's balls in the air. Still,everything you'd guess about him from his acting seems designed to make you wonder why he'd want to appear in Herbie: Fully Loaded or be reincarnated as a snowman in Jack Frost: how hard up can he be for ways to impress his kids? Some of his recent films went all but unreleased (including The Merry Gentlemen, which he directed), but he gave one of his best performances last year on TV, in the cable miniseries The Company, where his legendary CIA brainmaster James Jesus Angleton gave you the feeling that decades of American history were decided by the icy paranoia of a few quietly deranged men in dark rooms. He also famously dropped out of the TV series Lost after learning that the producers had changed their minds about killing off his character in the pilot episode. The one thing that's plain and clear about Keaton is that he's a restless man whose reluctant to settle for the obvious, even if he'd rather star in White Noise than be idle while waiting for his next chance to shake up the Richter scale in a meaningful way. Some young hotshot director who's looking to make waves should plug himself into Keaton's aura and see what happens.

KELLY LYNCH

Lynch is regally beautiful enough, and capable of summoning up enough style and attitude, that you might be tempted to describe her as the sane equivalent of Sharon Stone, if that didn't undervalue her acting range: though she ought to be a movie star, Lynch is also actress enough to pass for a normal human being. For all practical purposes, her movie career really begin with Drugstore Cowboy, where as Diane, the drug-fiend housewife, she burned holes in the screen with her level gaze until exiting the picture with her vulnerabilities finally exposed, a thoroughbred on shaky legs. So far as good movies go, that was pretty much the end of her career, too, though she's continued to give solidly crafted, emotionally rich performances in all manner of dreck, from the "ooh, edgy!" 1993 romantic comedy Three of Hearts, in which she yearned for fellow M.I.A. Sherilyn Fenn, to the 2005 head trip The Jacket, where she gave Adrien Brody more reason than usual to have the shivers. Her chops are formidable and she clearly loves a challenge, and trying to keep her dignity and earn her paycheck in Mr. Magoo clearly counts as a challenge. But she probably deserves better. I know those of us who are her fans do.

SUZY AMIS

Amis has a face that, at least when it's filtered through the lenses of the cameras that love her unconditionally, could make you forget about everything else in the world if your hair was on fire. As an actress, she invariably communicates warmth and sweetness, but she can dredge up subterranean feelings of anger and pain when she needs to. Rolling Stone gave her its vote as the Next Big Thing actress back in the late 1980s, and in little seen indie fare such as Rocket Gibralter, Watch It, and Michael Almereyada's Twister and Nadja, as well as bigger-budget but well-hidden films such as John Boorman's Where the Heart Is and Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love, she delivered everything a movie "It girl" could deliver but the box office success. One of her rare starring vehicles, The Ballad of Little Jo, developed a small cult following after it was smuggled onto cable TV, though perhaps the most stunning evidence of how much she could give a movie came with the 1993 two-character filmed play Two Small Bodies, a weird take on the Alice Crimmins case kept on life support by Amis and her co-star Fred Ward, who probably deserves his own entry on this list. She finally got to be in a hit in 1995 when she was tapped to supply the token amount of estrogen to the cast of The Usual Suspects, a movie where the late-arriving news that her character has been murdered off-screen hits the viewer like a lead weight hitting one's foot. But then she took on a nothing role in James Cameron's Titanic, and she and Cameron (who at the time was married to his fourth wife and Terminator leading lady, Linda Hamilton) had an affair -- then the next thing you know, Cameron's divorce was final and the two of them were getting married, and she hasn't worked since, just as Hamilton was out of circulation while she and Cameron were married. I look forward to the day that James Cameron meets his future sixth wife the way some people look forward to getting their hands on their 401k.

ELIZABETH PENA

In the mid-1980s, in such movies as Down and Out in Beverly Hills, La Bamba, and Jacob's Ladder, Pena established herself as a pouty, steamy cuddlebug, but one whose pout concealed teeth that could bite: her expression of disgust when looking at the macho moron she married in La Bamba leaves a stronger visual memory than the happy romantic scenes of Lou Diamond Phillips' Richie Valens courting his unruffled blonde kewpie doll Donna. As a post-ingenue actress, Pena had her highest-profile role in John Sayles' Lone Star, sitting on a car hood with Chris Cooper, trying to process the information that their love was not meant to be, big time. She can currently be seen in the ensemble cast of the family comedy Nothing Like the Holidays, physically a little puffier-looking but with banked fires still smoldering behind her eyes. Someone needs to provide her with a canvass broad enough to let those fires flame out.

Click Here For Part Two, Three & Four

Contributor: Phil Nugent

Thursday Morning... er, Evening Poll for May 1, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

The people have spoken, and when it comes to Philip Seymour Hoffman's work in 2007, your favorite was... all of them, as "how can I pick just one?" took in 31% of the vote in last week's poll. Of the "just ones," the favorite of the bunch was his work as the sleazy, duplicitous Andy in Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, followed by Jon in The Savages. My favorite of the bunch, his performance as the wonderfully salty Gust in Charlie Wilson's War, took in a mere 13%, bringing it even with the tally from the "I don't like him" contingent.

This week, we're back to looking ahead. This week's list found your intrepid Screengrabbers floating their predictions for the biggest blockbusters of this upcoming summer. Now it's your turn.

And as a bonus, take a crack at predicting this summer's Evan Almighty:

As always, feel free to sound off in the comments.

DVD Digest for April 15, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For those of you looking to spend this year's tax refund check on DVDs, this won't be a particularly good week for you. But there is at least one exception...

Had you going there, didn't I? My well-documented soft spot for Dr. Uwe Boll notwithstanding, the real gem this week is The Criterion Collection's release of Blast of Silence. Criterion has long been beloved for its top-notch DVD editions of canonical favorites, but just as important in my mind is their tendency to unearth forgotten treasures. Allen Baron's Blast of Silence definitely qualifies, a grim, gritty noir about a hitman carrying out an assignment during the Christmas season. In many ways, the film feels ahead of its time, with Lionel Stander's narration- delivered in the second person- translating wonderfully to our post-Tarantino age. Blast of Silence is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation, and this Criterion release should ensure it reaches the audience it deserves.

Of course, if it's something new you're looking for, there are a couple of those this week. For people looking for indie quirk, there's two different versions of the Oscar-nominated juggernaut Juno (Fox, also Blu-Ray), the two-disc special edition of which includes featurettes called Diablo Cody Is Totally Boss, Jason Reitman for Shizz, and Honest to Blog! Creating Juno. But if you've already gotten all the Juno you can handle, or you simply craving characters who don't talk in grating sound bites, there's also MGM's Lars and the Real Girl, which isn't perfect but which I preferred to its better-hyped counterpart.

In addition, this week also sees the release of Sidney Lumet's "comeback" vehicle Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I wasn't nearly as big a fan of the film as Scott von Doviak was, but it's good to see Lumet still making films that are worth getting excited about.

And I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the release of Dr. Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (Fox). After catching this in theatres, I remarked to my friends that it was "not good, but kind of awesome," exactly the kind of movie that I would have enjoyed when I was ten years old and fantasy movies weren't as popular as they are now. If nothing else, it's more entertaining than this week's other think-at-your-own-peril new release, Aliens vs. Predator- Requiem (Fox, also Blu-Ray).

As for classics, there's not much outside of our DVD of the week. Fans of late, logy Lean films can get their fix with the release of the A Passage to India Collector's Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also of note is MGM's two-pack of Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On the Move, for those who are so inclined. And for TV fans, there's The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2 (Universal), MGM's Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection (which is missing the original theatrical feature), and American Dad, Volume 3.

Finally, we arrive at the moment where I turn over the column to my friend and yours, Mr. David Huddleston. Not too many condolences this week, only Warner Brothers' HD-DVD release of Bonnie and Clyde. Still, Mr. Huddleston wishes that his condolences weren't necessary, and that the DVD companies would take the hint and get on the Blu-Ray bandwagon so he could make other, more enjoyable plans for his Tuesday mornings.

Forgotten Films: "Just Tell Me What You Want" (1980)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

In his the most recent film of his incredibly long, checkered, impressive career, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (out on DVD next week), director Sidney Lumet played to his strengths: his rapport with his actors, and his ability to tap into an energy that can be exciting even when it turns scabrous. Lumet turned those qualities on his own show-business-industry set in his 1980 comedy Just Tell Me What You Want, which came out early in 1980, got appalled reviews, and vanished from sight. Like much of Lumet's work, the movie is uneven and feels patched-together in places, but the very qualities that seemed to gross out critics at the time are part of what makes it such a bold, distinctive entertainment, a romantic comedy without illusions. It's cynical without being judgemental, which is so unusual that some reviewers may have had trouble believing what they were seeing. (Lumet got great reviews for some of his duller '80s films that were eager to point fingers at their characters' moral defects.)

Its hero, and its target, is Max Herschel, a self-made corporate head (played by the stand-up comic Alan King) who sees everything, including his love life, as a succession of deals to be made. Max is married (to a drug-addled, bejewelled WASP goddess played by Dina Merrill), but he's been juggling a long-term affair with a TV producer (Ali MacGraw), and when she leaves him for a playwright (Peter Weller) who represents artistic purity and uncommercial values, Max freaks. What makes his decision to wage war on his ex-girlfriend, by wrecking her career while offering her writer-lover the chance to corrupt himself by adapting his own work to the movies, weirdly charming is that, like Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, he's trying to win her back by bringing her to her senses. He's right to think that she really belongs in the executive suite with him instead of blowing on her fingers in a cold hovel playing muse to some proud literary loser. And Alan King, in his only starring movie role, makes Max a hard man to dislike. (The large, lively cast also includes Myrna Loy, smooth as silk in her final screen role as Max's secretary.) Just Tell Me What You Want may have been a few years ahead of its time; a year after its release, Ronald Reagan was president, manipulative rich bastards were on their way to being redefined as glamorous "Masters of the Universe", and in People magazine and on TV series such as Dynasty, Americans were cheering on pushy, multimillionaire hustlers without a fraction of Max's charm. It might be the tragedy of Donald Trump's life that he had to settle for playing himself instead of staying home and letting Alan King do it for him.

Bad Nudes Bare: Stars You Didn’t Need to See Naked

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Here's another list for you, and in this case, we can honestly say we're relieved we didn't have to do the research on this one. Courtesy of Papermag, it's Cinemaniac's Top Ten Worst Nude Scenes of All Time. Dennis Dermody speaks for all of us when he writes, "I like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he's a terrific actor. I've seen him at the neighborhood market and he seems quite pleasant, but I don't want to have that image of his big, bare, flabby ass branded on my brain, and now every time I see him that's what I'm going to see."

It's true that Hoffman's heaving hindquarters prove to be a hard image to shake in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but Dermody has turned up some more obscure fleshy displays to sear into our memory banks. Any fans of Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends out there? "In the film, Dyan Cannon fantasizes about Burgess Meredith dancing naked in front of her with a book dangling from a chain to strategically cover his privates," writes Dermody. "It's enough to turn you off reading forever."

Dermody is also quite correct to single out Kathy Bates' mud-covered streak through the jungle in At Play in the Fields of the Lord over her much more innocuous hot-tub antics with Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. But we have to guess he never caught Borat in theaters; fighting furball Ken Davitian is missing from the list.

Grumbling About Mumbling: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Other Mushmouths

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Ever since Frank Sinatra christened Marlon Brando "Mumbles" on the set of Guys and Dolls, inarticulate and incomprehensible speech has been a mainstay of American cinema, particularly among Method actors. David Jenkins of The Guardian has had enough, and it's Philip Seymour Hoffman who has pushed him to the breaking point.

Jenkins' snippy piece begins: "So there they are, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney, emoting like nobody's business after they've buried the woman who was, respectively, their mother and their wife, in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. There's a silence, and then Hoffman speaks — whereupon Finney slaps him. It's clearly a crucial moment, this explosion of violence, but I've yet to talk to anyone who could hear what Hoffman actually said."

Jenkins goes on to bemoan the mushmouthed stylings of the cast of Charlie Wilson's War (including Hoffman again), Miami Vice (with non-American Colin Farrell cited as a prime offender) and even There Will Be Blood. (He lets the Coens off the hook, noting critic Anne Billson's explanation for the clarity of speech in No Country for Old Men: "The Coen brothers are famously proud of their dialogue, so they make sure you can hear it."

The piece traces screen mumbling back to Brando, of course, but also pins some of the blame on Robert Altman for his trademark overlapping dialogue. It's a little hard to believe that nearly forty years after MASH critics and filmmakers could still be uptight about Altman's brilliant cacophonies, but Sexy Beast producer Hercules Bellville agrees. "I've got no problems with 1940s films; then only Peter Lorre had a strange accent. Now there are all sorts of odd accents and dialects, and the colloquial is often rapid and slurred. But technically, there's no reason for it."

These guys are way too uptight; after all, it's not as if American audiences have never had trouble deciphering British speech, and you don't hear us complaining. To quote Benicio Del Toro in The Usual Suspects, "Gbaughg thfllwoogha schwfjflhaw."

Oscar Nominations: Is the Egg Showin'?

Paul Clark — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

So. . . what was it William Goldman said again? I suppose my predictions weren't too bad under the circumstances, but just like every other year, the Oscar nominations held plenty of surprises.

A full list of nominations can be found right here.

In no particular order:

- The almost total lack of love for Into the Wild. I figured that the acclaim for this true-life story, and the presence of Sean Penn — an actor they clearly love — in the director's chair, would make the film Academy catnip. Clearly, I was mistaken.

- On the other hand, they loved There Will Be Blood even more than I'd anticipated, looking past its darkness to see how flat-out brilliant it is (sorry, haters), giving PTA not only best director and adapted screenplay, but a best picture nomination as well. The Jonny Greenwood thing stung a bit, but the other technical nods — art direction, cinematography, sound design and editing — compensate pretty well. And Daniel Day-Lewis is looking pretty unstoppable for best actor at this point. All in all, Blood received eight nominations, tying it for the most-honored film with widely-acknowledged frontrunner No Country for Old Men.

- Atonement. Wait, this movie's chances for best picture were supposed to be more or less dead. Don't the voters read the prognosticators? Still, despite the film's considerable pedigree and handsome production values, Joe Wright was shut out of best director (in favor of Ivan Reitman's kid, no less), which leads me to believe this barely squeaked in. But you never know.

- Show of hands: who saw the best actor nod for Tommy Lee Jones coming? Certainly not me. I figured that he had a good chance for his supporting work in No Country for Old Men, but I'm surprised any of the voters actually remembered In the Valley of Elah. But I won't complain. As an avowed Crash hater, nobody was more surprised than me that Elah turned out to be pretty darn good, due in large part to Jones' great performance. I'll certainly take him over, say, John Travolta in a fat suit.

- The double dip for Cate Blanchett. Yes, she was a deserving nominee for playing the most fondly-remembered of Todd Haynes' menagerie of Dylans. But honoring Elizabeth: The Golden Age tells me that the voters ran out of suitable nominees. Lord knows I'm no fan of Angelina Jolie, but at least she tried to give a multilayered performance in A Mighty Heart, which is more than I can say about Blanchett in Nobody But Elizabeth Expects the Spanish Inquisition. Just. . . ugh.

- When I floated my best supporting actress theory — that in recent years, the great majority of nominees in this category appear in films opposite performers who also get nominated — I wasn't just blowing smoke. Seriously, look it up. But, probably just to confound me, the nominations bucked the trend this year, with only one of the nominees (Michael Clayton's Tilda Swinton) appearing opposite another Oscar nominees. Just as unexpectedly, only Clayton managed more than one acting nomination, wrangling three for Swinton, George Clooney, and Tom Wilkinson.

- Three out of five Best Original Song nominations went to Enchanted. Either they really love Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz or it was a really slow year for original songs. Probably both. At least they were smart enough to nominate "Falling Slowly."

- Hey, did you know that people made documentaries this year that didn't deal with the war in Iraq? I only ask because three of the five Best Documentary Feature nominees were Iraq-themed, with only Michael Moore's Sicko and the Uganda-themed War/Dance tackling different subjects. The biggest disappointment is the snubbing of Tony Kaye's exhaustive, empathetic abortion documentary Lake of Fire, by my estimation the year's finest non-fiction film.

- Finally, I leave you with four horrifying words: "Academy Award Nominee Norbit." Sure, it's for best makeup, and considering that the makeup branch loves the hell out of Rick Baker it would've been madness NOT to predict him. But think about it: Norbit, possibly the most reviled film of 2007, received more Oscar nominations than Zodiac, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Knocked Up, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and Control. . . COMBINED. Hard to believe, but the makeup branch has actually managed to outdo last year's Click nomination.

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.

Morning Deal Report: Amy Ryan on a Hot Streak

Peter Smith — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Amy Ryan is doing well these days, with parts in Dan in Real Life and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and a highly acclaimed performance in Gone Baby Gone. (I just finished watching her fine work in Season 2 of The Wire, to boot.) Now she and Greg Kinnear are joining Matt Damon in a Paul-Greengrass-directed thriller based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's non-fiction Iraq chronicle, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. This also marks a reunion of Damon and Greengrass, which any Bourne fan knows is a good thing.

Jessica Biel costars with Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas in the Noel Coward adaptation Easy Virtue.

Boys Don't Cry and Stop Loss director Kimberly Pierce wants to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. It's always interesting when a serious, realism-minded director steps into sci-fi. Let's hope this happens.

Top 10 of 2007: Scott Von Doviak

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

People say I’m a weenie for thinking this, but I feel these year-end top ten lists should be handled like the Hall of Fame: there should be a five-year waiting period in order to avoid any embarrassing blunders. Believe me, I have a record of top tens dating back to 1999 preserved forever on the Internet, and never fail to experience twinges of regret, shivers of shame and head-scratching moments of pure bewilderment when I look back at them. I’d feel much better right now if I were compiling my favorites of 2002, but rules are rules, so here are 10 movies I hope I won’t feel terrible about praising when 2012 rolls around:

10. Zodiac

For about three-quarters of its running time, David Fincher’s serial killer procedural is about as engrossing, stylish and smartly assembled as mainstream cinema gets, expertly evoking the 1970s (Mark Ruffalo, in particular, transforms himself into a broody ’70s actor in the De Niro/Pacino mode) and humanizing a story that could have been run-of-the-mill exploitation. It’s penalized a few notches here for running out of gas in the final reels: those scenes between the obsessed investigator and his long-suffering wife were already old and tired in the ’70s.

9. Juno

The first five minutes of Juno are so overloaded with quirkiness, it’s as if director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody are desperate enough to make an immediate impression that they’ll settle for making a bad one. That the movie is able to not only recover but go on to become an affecting (and very funny) story about real people making difficult choices is a tribute to their talent, and especially that of Ellen Page in a star-making performance as the titular pregnant teen.

8. Knocked Up

Why settle for one unplanned pregnancy comedy when 2007 was fertile enough to produce twins? You could quibble about gender politics, but then you’d miss out on some of the year’s biggest laughs courtesy of the ever-expanding Apatow Comedy Empire. (Honorable mention: Superbad. Not so much: Walk Hard.)

7. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Speaking of movies that recover from the opening five minutes, here’s one that treats you to the sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s heaving, flabby buttocks obscuring some delightful Marisa Tomei nudity (don’t worry, though – there’s plenty of that later). In what is not so much a comeback as a rejuvenation, octogenarian Sidney Lumet has crafted a twisty tale of familial betrayal enlived by a Hoffman performance so vivid, you can smell the desperation.

6. Breach

Billy Ray makes his own special brand of what one friend of the Screengrab refers to as “guys in suits” movies. Like Ray’s debut Shattered Glass, Breach is a low-key yet subtly gripping thriller about a man whose life of lies crumbles within the institution that has defined him. In this case, that man is contradictory CIA agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper, never better), a deeply religious, sexually kinky traitor to his country. No 007-style glamour and action here; the suspense emerges from the mundane but meticulously detailed life of a Cold War spy trying to stay one step ahead of his colleagues.

5. Deep Water

Sure, having too much money and free time sounds like fun, but that way of life is not without its pitfalls. This fascinating, disquieting documentary details a 1968 solo sailboat race around the world, and the amateur sailor, Donald Crowhurst, who pinned his family’s future on the whim of winning it. Pieced together from newsreels, Crowhurst’s original 16mm film and contemporary interviews, what begins as a bracing tale of men against the sea becomes a full-blown descent into madness.

4. Killer of Sheep

I am assured by publicists that Charles Burnett’s 1977 thesis film counts as a 2007 release, so there’s no reason not to include it here. This stark slice of inner city life finds drama in the smallest moments; even the routine purchase of a used motor becomes an exercise in heartbreaking futility. Never stooping to heavy-handed message-making, Sheep packs an emotional wallop in the end.

3. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Don’t wait for the inevitable scripted remake of this simple tale of two men vying for the world’s record high score in Donkey Kong. It won’t begin to capture the wit, drama and humanity of Seth Gordon’s outrageously entertaining documentary. Pitting an ’80s relic coasting on past glories against a regular guy with a history of failures in life, overseen by an indelible gallery of game-geeks and marked with unexpected developments and reversals of fate, it’s the most purely joyful movie experience of the year.

2. No Country for Old Men

For much of the decade Joel and Ethan Coen looked like they were heading down the long road of diminishing returns, but they came all the way back with this transcendent thriller set on the Texas border. The most faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel imaginable, it still couldn’t be anything other than a Coen Brothers movie. The brilliant suspense sequences and Javier Bardem’s chilling turn as a malevolent killer are the obvious attractions, but it’s the final lyrical moments that linger when the lights come up.

1. I’m Not There

Less perfect in every way than No Country, this fractured Bob Dylan biopic is nonetheless my pick for movie of the year. Scrambling the singer-songwriter’s legend and bouncing it off a series of funhouse mirrors, director Todd Haynes delights in the ever-more distorted reflections that result. Six different actors embody various aspects of the Bard, none more memorably than Cate Blanchett, who virtually channels Dylan’s hipster-dandy incarnation. It’s a dazzling mind-fuck for hardcore Dylan fans and perhaps a complete trainwreck for anyone else, but as a biography of an artistic sensibility – warts and all – it can’t be topped.

Today in the Nerve Film Lounge: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Rails & Ties, Hideout in the Sun, Brian De Palma

Peter Smith — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: "It's hard to dislike Philip Seymour Hoffman or Albert Finney. But in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, it's hard to like anyone, including those two snuggle-bears."

Rails & Ties: "Rails & Ties' long-shot coincidences could be compelling if they didn't feel so purposeful."

Hideout in the Sun: "If Hideout fails as pornography, it now excels as history, a snapshot of a time that may have been less overtly sleazy than our own, but was every bit as dirty-minded."

Q&A: Brian De Palma: "The media has basically been co-opted and made rich. If you're supposed to be a watchdog for corruption, and you're a part of it all. . . "

Whitefield at NYFF: Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Let it not be said that I don’t respect Sidney Lumet. I read his book Making Movies and found it both practical and enlightening. I loved Dog Day Afternoon (who doesn’t?) and Running on Empty. But let’s face facts. Lumet is eighty-three. He made 12 Angry Men in 1957 — fifty years ago! When you receive a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars, you can probably read that as Hollywood’s polite way of saying, "It’s a wrap." Apparently Mr. Lumet is hard of hearing.

Though not nearly as bad as his last film, Find Me Guilty, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead turns out to be twice as frustrating, as it squanders an outstanding cast and a knockout script. Lumet chose to go the Tarantino/Babel route and skew the story’s narrative timeline, but by doing so he takes all the suspense out of what could have been huge dramatic windfalls by giving you three major (and I mean major) plot twists within the first fifteen minutes. As if that wasn’t crime enough, each time sequence change is signaled by the two frames locking into one another as opposing triangles in a square that click and spin into the next scene. This and the poor film quality make Before The Devil Knows You're Dead look like a made-for-tv movie circa 1991.

A dream cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and a remarkably sexy Marisa Tomei do an admirable job of trying to prop this dog up on four legs, but in the end it’s just too much to ask. The film’s story spirals from tragic family drama of epic proportions into the realm of the absurd, with plot points that are increasingly unbelievable and distracting. The person I feel the worst for is first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson, who probably thought her dream had come true when she heard Lumet would bring her script to life, only to find herself the victim of an outdated director. I can only imagine the kind of film someone like Rian Johnson (Brick) or Christopher Nolan would have made given the exact same elements. — Bryan Whitefield