Goddesses, Pianos, Princes, and a Book You Should Must Buy

After being on quite the roll there for a minute, I haven't posted in over two weeks, so I may as well pack a lot into this entry. Yesterday was, after all, a High Holy Day: the birthday of my grandfather, but also of the late, impossibly great Katharine Hepburn, who would have turned 101 if she hadn't died five years ago. (Has it really already been five years?) I believe I have already made clear my semi-religious feelings about Katharine Hepburn here. May 12 is always a delicious day for me, but then Nathaniel came along to make it even sweeter, even as I sat languishing in bed with an illness so bad I had to cancel my classes and stay home from work. Telepathically aware that I needed as much restorative bliss as I could get, Nathaniel offered this sterling tribute to Jane Campion's The Piano, and though I still don't understand how or why Nathaniel loves eight movies even more than this one, I of course thrilled to his evocative, beautifully illustrated ode to the film—especially since it sounds as though he might like it even more now than he once did! Nathaniel's subsequent blog posting is about princes, but he is obviously a prince himself to be this publicly and appropriately worshipful of the most important movie in my life, and surely one of the best ever made.

I've shown even less restraint on my own list of the 100 greatest movies (a feature that needs a qualitative as well as a formatting overhaul), where The Piano still reigns at #1. Yes, I grant that its crucial arrival at the absolute, most poignant onset of my movie-loving life has a great deal to do with this unusually robust claim on the film's behalf, and I've never gotten around to writing the public defense of this position that I obviously owe. I'm getting there; I always mean well. Happily, another prince of the blogosphere, Tim R. of MainlyMovies—who keeps even more mum on his blog lately than I do on mine—furnished me with a brilliant occasion to celebrate The Piano in print. That occasion was a book he co-edited called The DVD Stack, now in its 2nd Edition, and not to put too fine a point on it, YOU HAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK. Within, you'll find succinct but searching reviews of over 350 movies that are either masterworks in themselves, or the welcome recipients of brilliant presentations on DVD, or both. The writers are mostly staffers of major British publications like the Daily Telegraph, Time Out London, the Sunday Times, and Sight and Sound, but they found room for me in that august group. I got to wax awestruck about 16 of my favorite movies, from Persona to The Cell to Daughters of the Dust to Singin' in the Rain to Harlan County, U.S.A.. If that small sampler doesn't sufficiently convince you that The DVD Stack breaks significantly from the usual All-Time Best roll call—but without petulantly avoiding some objects of universal and deserved adoration—then you haven't experienced the back-to-back tributes to DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (a surreally inspired DVD, apparently) and La Dolce vita. I would absolutely buy and treasure this book even if Tim hadn't edited it, and I would absolutely shill it even if I weren't in it. As an appetizer course, and as a reciprocal gesture to Nathaniel's lovely tribute, here's what I have to say about The Piano ... and yes, we are absolutely talking about that spectacular and affordably priced R2/PAL edition that completely wipes the floor with the despicable and un-extra'd U.S. print. I was limited to 400 words (a first time for everything!), but I hope you get the drift:

The film: Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) is a 19th-century Scotswoman who has refused to speak since she was six years old. She arrives in New Zealand as the purchased bride of a taciturn colonist, but neither she nor her fatherless daughter (Anna Paquin) make any easy concessions to domestic custom. Ada's proud resolve is shared by the film, which forges ahead into tense, exotic circumstances and allows us, indeed forces us, to fend for ourselves within its fertile landscape of desire, violence, envy, and enigma. The piano in Jane Campion's magisterial film is an instrument, a voicebox, a prize, a symbol, a concept, a thing-in-itself, a means of communication, and a bulky rampart against it. Campion's ingenuity is to read all the same paradoxes into human personality and sexuality. Her film looks askance at daily life, brimming with unexpected angles and an almost subconscious language of images and tones, and yet it stares forthrightly into extraordinary conflicts: the worst of what people do to each other, and the remarkable, ambiguous ways in which we save each other. None of this, of course, would be possible without the flawless cast, the superb locations, the eccentrically beautiful score, and the utterly persuasive production design.

The DVD: Heretofore available only in an undistinguished and feature-free version, The Piano finally attains a proper showcase, with an impressive gallery of key creative personnel gathered for the occasion. Campion and producer Jan Chapman provide a chummy but detailed commentary track, but even more illuminating are the generous interviews with both women as well as composer Michael Nyman, all furnished on the second disc. Campion speaks for a full, congenial hour about her creative process (including glimpses at her sketchbooks), her casting decisions and varying methods with different actors, her close collaboration with her cinematographer, and her charmingly ambivalent response to the film's Oscar successes. Chapman elucidates with passion the role of an independent film producer, specifically when securing international funds for a risky screenplay, and Nyman, without winning any trophies for modesty, sheds valuable light on how and why the film was tailored to the score, rather than the more customary reverse. A shorter making-of featurette from the time of the film's production expands to include the lead actors' perspectives. Best of all, the print transfer exquisitely captures the rolling waves, the plashy mud, the burnished glow of the interiors, and the eerie, aqueous light of the New Zealand bush.

Thanks, Nathaniel; thanks, Tim; thanks, Jane; thanks, Holly, Harvey, Anna, Sam, Jan, Stuart, Veronika, Michael, Janet, Andrew, Tungia, Kerry, Genevieve...; thanks, Katharine; thanks, Opa; overwork and underpay and all-nighters be damned, all is full of love today on Nick's Flick Picks.

Photos © 1993 Miramax Films/Ciby2000; and © 2007 Canongate Ltd.

In the City of Smart People

That's what we tell ourselves in Chicago, anyway, especially where I hang out. But I can't well give into self-indulgence when I'm decrying it in the movies—and there's more than enough to go around in José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia, an unbearably light divertissement from Spain with pretty retro gender politics mixed in with its buttery spectacle. I saw Sylvia as part of the Indianapolis International Film Festival that I keep advertising to you; though I've had to return to my hometown and its seedy Greyhound terminal and its shady "livery cabs" to pick up the reins of my day job, that shouldn't stop you from visiting the Circle City and catching some more flicks. If all the festival screenings are sold out when you get there (dream big!), you can still catch Noam Murro's Smart People at an adjoining auditorium in the same Landmark Theatre. That's three full reviews in two days. Who knows what May will bring? (Answer: hopefully a movie that deserves higher than a B. But, a hint: I already saw one in the Hoosier State. Keep reading!)

'River' Queen

When it rains it pours, even if that's not quite the right aquatic idiom for Chris Eigeman's Turn the River. What I mean is, almost a month with no posting, and then two in one day! Granted, that's often the way with me, but why not keep up some momentum while I'm still here at the festival and post a full review for my favorite film I've seen so far outside of my own assigned competition bracket ...which, again, I'm not yet at liberty to discuss. Stay tuned, but for now, tune into Famke Janssen's impressive, film-carrying performance in Turn the River, reviewed here, and opening in New York and LA, we gather, on May 9. Be there for Famke, though there's even more in this film to admire.

It Takes A Village Nathaniel...

...to get me blogging again, but seriously, how could I share a hotel room for a whole weekend with His High Holy Hyper-Productiveness and not get my act together? It's so late now that I don't have time to say much about the movies we've been seeing at the 2008 Indianapolis Film Festival, where we are both serving as jurors—he in the World Cinema bracket, and I in the American Spectrum competition for homegrown independent dramas. Suffice it to say that none of the first four features I've seen has quite blown my socks off, but they all have significant virtues, particularly the committed performance by Famke Janssen in Turn the River and some juicy pop arcana in the documentary Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story. But more on those soon—and, later on, a little more on the features and the short films that I'm overseeing as part of my jury duties (with Sean Penn as my spiritual if not my practical leader). I'm not at liberty to say anything about these before awards are announced next weekend, but I'll allow myself these: you're missing a lot of good work if you live in the Hoosier State and you aren't catching these movies. Indiana may never again produce anything quite as great as recent birthday girl Dr. S, but this film festival would be a splendid achievement in any "small" city (and at 850,000, not that small), and the all-volunteer staff and supervisors have done a beautiful, generous job of hosting and coordinating. Come out and represent, Indiana!

Nick's Flick Picks watchers will also want to know that, with the fifth month of the year about to roll around, I finally have a Movies of 2008 page up and running, with pages and the usual screening log, though no reviews yet. I don't know where Ryan Phillippe came up with that sterling Stop-Loss performance or what so many other critics saw in the Oscar-nominated Beaufort (that 4 Months omission is officially a travesty), or quite what to say yet about the maddening half-successes of Teeth and Paranoid Park, but I'll (try to) get there. And yes, I still plan to finish that Best of 2007 countdown.

Welcome to a New Dimension...

The short version is that Blogger derailed my FTP publishing platform one too many times, and remained absolutely unresponsive on the issue for well over a week. So, I have finally relinquished FTP publishing on this blog—which I now realize I should have done a while ago—and have migrated the blog over to a custom domain on my own site.

So, welcome to the new address: http://blog.nicksflickpicks.com. Please update any links on your own webpages and/or bookmarks in your browsers to reflect the new destination. Enjoy the new digs!

Who's Afraid of Best Actress 1966?

Both polls for the 1997 Best Actress race have been landslides on behalf of my own pick, Helena Bonham Carter. Which is lovely, if a mite unsuspenseful—and I'm guessing that outcome won't change too much in the polling for my latest group, the leading ladies of 1966. Liz Taylor, absent but at least out of surgery on Oscar night, had nothing to worry about in that year's race and I'm confident that she won't here, either. Feel free to prove me wrong—I know there are staunch fans of A Man and a Woman fans out there—but she's superb in Woolf, and though the other four films were all popular hits with major prizes under their belts, none of them have the enduring visibility of Taylor's vehicle.

To keep things interesting, then, I've added a third question to this round of polling, which will become a fixture whenever I delve into a long-ago year where I haven't seen as many films or performances as I have from the recent vintages. Decide my fate, reader. Chart my course. Be the wind beneath my actress-loving wings. What performance from Oscar's eligibility field would you support as my next pit-stop on the 1966 trail? Hana Brejchová's in a Czech New Wave hit and Best Foreign-Language Film nominee (and thus a generic sibling of Ida Kaminská's film and an also-ran to A Man and a Woman's Oscar win)? 1965 nominee Elizabeth Hartman in very early Coppola? Fellini and Herzog favorite Claudia Cardinale in the American west? Late starlet-period Jane Fonda? A Criterion-certified masterpiece by Carl-Theodor Dreyer or late-arriving Chabrol, or outsider icon Tuesday Weld in a proto-Heathers, or Godard muse and wife Anna Karina, or Lauren Bacall scoping out Paul Newman? The cross-cultural stars of a very early Merchant-Ivory? Maybe you prefer Frankenheimer weirdness or Tony Richardson hit-and-missness, or you feel like putting me through Shelley Winters or the stunted-camera time-capsule The Group, with its eight female leads? Which ever way you're leaning, read up on Oscar's own priority list and then let your voice be heard! And if your implicit vote is "other," arrest me with your alternative options in the Comments. (N.B. Since I've promised to provide these direction-seeking polls in all the years where I am under-versed, I've put one up for 1932, also.)

(By the way, speaking of big female ensembles, a quick plug for the 1966 John Ford doozy 7 Women, especially for you Paradise Road fans who spoke up in the '97 discussion. 7 Women, Ford's last film, presents a palpably perverse Christian mission that now has a Mongol warrior to worry about, all of which gives prim autocrat Margaret Leighton some fascinating context for her trembling-neurotic routine. Sue Lyon finally gets to play the good girl instead of the fantasy or the sexpot, and Anne Bancroft gets her Johnny Guitar on as a butch expatriate doctor willing to go a long, long way—and I don't just mean to China—for the good of civilization. And she's a Ford character, so she's not even sure she likes civilization! Pretty non-stop intensity for 87 minutes, give or take its lapses in judgment and cultural sensitivity, and a literally killer ending to boot.)

Best Actress 1997: In Semi-Defense of Helen Hunt

I can't think of another recent Oscar winner who is held in the kind of opprobrium that Helen Hunt is for scooping the 1997 Best Actress prize. I think a lot of people would give Gwyneth Paltrow and Roberto Benigni three trophies apiece if it meant they could subtract Hunt's, and it's true that her subsequent film career hasn't done much (i.e., anything) to quell the naysayers who wondered how the Oscars had just turned into the Emmys. But I thought she was pretty terrific at the time, and I still do, even though I would have voted for another actress ahead of her. Taking Jack's Oscar away for that strange, discombobulated film would suit me just fine, but that's a different discussion for a different site. (N.B. I goofed and forgot to upload the revised version of my overall 1997 ballot, linked from the actress page, before I posted last night. Apologies to Billy Connolly and James Cameron.)

For now, read on... and don't forget to vote in the poll, halfway down the page! (Yep, there are polls for every year from 1998 to 2007, too, and for 1931-32, for those of you who missed 'em last time you visited the Best Actress Archive.)

Best of 2007: Adventures in Nonfiction

If you're looking to be fascinated, elated, humbled, informed, and deeply, deeply unsettled by the movies—and who among us isn't?—you can skip the fiction section entirely and peruse my choices for the Best Documentaries of last year. With Lake of Fire arriving on DVD this past Tuesday, all five films are officially available to those of you with Netflix dependencies, and with the 2008 release calendar starting to extend more interesting options, you'll want to jump on these superior films before you get swept up in the avalanche of the new. That's right: you can keep counting on me and this blog to hold you back, just when you're eager to move forward. Long live 2007!

Best of 2007: Ensemble

Ever feel like you're stuck in a year that you can't get out of? I realize that it's March, for crying out loud, but I'm afraid that I am still not done celebrating the movie year we have now said goodbye to, over and over again. Perhaps early-childhood imprinting has shaped my awards-season metabolism around the late March calendar, even though the Oscars have been on their accelerated schedule for five years now. Or maybe I just have an incredibly demanding job. Either way, and perhaps because I am sitting in a faraway city attending an academic conference with two blogging buddies, and because I find conferences to be helpful reminders that we academics (especially in our home disciplines) really are In This Thing Together, I present you with the long-delayed Nick's Flick Picks Honorees for Best Ensemble. Apologies about length, but with this many delectable performances to cover, one tends to overween.

The End of the New

Am I the last to know that New Line Cinema is officially, as of Thursday, no longer a freestanding entity? Check out A.O. Scott's eulogy at the New York Times, and think a fond thought for the studio behind the Nightmares on Elm Street, the John Waters Hairspray, The Rapture, My Own Private Idaho, Menace II Society, Blink, Se7en, Boogie Nights, Wag the Dog, Dark City, Living Out Loud, American History X, The Astronaut's Wife, Magnolia, The Cell, Bamboozled, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Birth, The New World, the musical Hairspray, and some movies about some blingy elves. Plus, via its late subdivision Fine Line Features, some production or distribution money for An Angel at My Table, Edward II, The Player, The Ballad of Little Jo, Spanking the Monkey, Short Cuts, Hoop Dreams, Once Were Warriors, Barcelona, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Double Happiness, Death and the Maiden, Crash, Gummo, The Sweet Hereafter, The Winter Guest, Passion in the Desert, Hurlyburly, Besieged, Tumbleweeds, Before Night Falls, Dancer in the Dark, The Anniversary Party, The Holy Girl, Vera Drake, Last Days, and Maria Full of Grace. That's a lot to be thankful for.

Goodbye, Oscar. Hello, Ladies!

(NOTE: In a fit of democratic inspiration, I have added poll interfaces to all of the yearly profile pages. Let me know who, among Oscar's batch, should have won and who, among my favorites, you like the most.)

For those of you who have asked, I know that I still have my 2007 Honorees to complete, including some home skillets and mighty hearts coming up in that Best Ensemble announcement that's been languishing for some time now. I will complete this work. But today, as we say goodbye to Oscar month, while also making a rare Leap into the future, I figure it's about time to doff the dustcover and unveil the BEST ACTRESS SPECIAL SECTION that I've been engineering for the past couple of months on my main website, Nick's Flick Picks. Fans of this site tend to share its obsession (my obsession) with leading ladies in general, and with Best Actress in particular. Remember this post? One of my biggest comment-grabbers ever, and in a circuitous way, a semi-inspiration for StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Smackdowns.

Now, you can read smackdowns with myself, in the cleanest sense, about all the Best Actress years, though of course I'm building them up as I go along:


     

     

     

     

As of now, you'll see profiles of the last ten years, as well as the 1931-32 year as a hint of what things sound like when we dig deeper into the past. Note, too, my anti-AMPAS preferential rankings of my own favorite leading-lady performances of each given year—plus, in all the recent years, quick ballots for my favorites in all the Picture, Director, and Acting races.

There's more! The Best Actress Special Section includes a Ranking Page of all of Oscar's winners, plus a listing by decade of my favorite losers, and a round-up of all the nominees I have yet to see (65 to go at this point, in this category). You'll also find a convenient table of Side by Side Comparisons of Oscar's champ, my favorite of his nominees, and my own championed performance from that year (using Oscar eligibility years). Dig around that page and you'll find a secret link with an extra column for all you Oscar the Grouches out there.


     

The part of the site that is still under the most construction is the Who's Who and FAQs Section, once and future home to brief personal profiles of all the nominees, grouped according to the scale of their success with Oscar and, in some cases, their level of overall fame. Currently, you'll only find full write-ups for Katharine Hepburn (a Pet, or someone with multiple wins and/or at least four Best Actress nominations) and for Cate Blanchett (a Slum Queen, or a Best Actress nominee whose only victories have arrived in the Supporting category). Crib your rental suggestions and take solace or offense at my feelings about these women and their performances.

And once you've done all that, e-mail me to ask new FAQs or stump for which years or actresses you hope to see profiled (I won't always get to it right away, but I'll remember the request) or tell me how beautifully all of this has been laid out and how you already can't live without this new section. Finally use the new "Women" link beside my profile picture on this blog as a quick way to check for updates in this quadrant of the website. Long live Best Actress, and now that Oscar has passed and the new year has officially begun, happy 2008! (And let me thank, in alphabetical order, Goatdog, John, Nathaniel, StinkyLulu, and Tim R. for their formatting and content suggestions while I was architecting this new space. To mix queer Bravo metaphors: my own Fab Five of Tim Gunns!)

Tilda Swinton, or Why I Love the Oscars

I went completely crazy when Tilda Swinton won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar on Sunday night. Jubilation crazy. Rhapsodic crazy. I have been sick since then, read a book since then, finished an essay, taught a class, attended a talk followed by a formal dinner, and written the same zillion e-mails that all of us write on Mondays in our jobs, and I have still found time to watch Tilda win seven or eight times—plus watching Markéta Irglova and Glen Hansard win three or four times, and Cate Blanchett grimace at her own Elizabeth scene twice. Of course I am ecstatic that the best performance in the category won, which for my money hasn't happened since Marcia Gay Harden in 2000 (although Rachel Weisz, very nearly as good as Amy Adams, might be close enough to count). But there is more to say, which will serve, at the moment, as my own complement to Nathaniel's wonderful and spirited retort to the insane allegation that the Oscars are somehow making a mistake by honoring the movies Hollywood admires rather than the movies the studios primarily banked on or the ones the wider public actually paid to see.

1. Tilda Swinton, Oscar Winner? I love the Academy Awards for pulling a surprise like this, not just in the sense that Tilda came from behind to win (which several prognosticators, including me, had started predicting at least a few weeks ago), but because here is a brilliant career that never seemed remotely Oscar-bound, and yet, here she is, ensconced in the Academy's admittedly spurious but hugely influential way in the annals of great popular acting. On my watch, Tilda would be a five-time nominee by now, with earlier Best Actress nods for Edward II in 1992, Orlando in 1993, Female Perversions in 1997 (when I would have had her win), and The Deep End in 2001, but I was well prepared to accept her avant-garde origins and her chiseled, androgynous pallor and her continued allegiance to out-there artists as a reason that she and Oscar would never sit down to lunch (whether or not George Clooney was hanging upside-down in the background).

2. The Archive Opens I love the Academy Awards for, however unwittingly, pointing cinephiles, especially budding ones, in the direction of work they might never actually see and that Oscar would never in a million years nominate. I have been on plenty of websites this season where people are clearly noticing Tilda for the first time because of the Oscar buzz, and then the nomination, and now the win. Since most Oscar obsessives I know came to our first flower of intensive back-catalogue renting and repertory-house screenings via the Oscar books, and then by moving onto the longer careers of nominees who most impressed us, I am beyond ecstatic that this public boost to Swinton's visibility and reputation will actually lead people to the above titles and Caravaggio and The Last of England and War Requiem and Blue and Love Is the Devil and The War Zone and Teknolust and Strange Culture (on DVD from Docurama at the end of March). Not to mention how many more will see Michael Clayton, or remember Tilda's great, small, Hollywood turns in films like Adaptation and Constantine. An indirect but no less indispensable function that Oscar serves within the wider ecosystem of popular film.

3. Against Nepotism Swinton didn't win for a single reason other than her performance, with the slight exception of Michael Clayton's shutout in other categories. Even there, plenty of well-liked nominees go home empty-handed every year (The Godfather Part III, The Prince of Tides, In the Name of the Father, The Shawshank Redemption, Secrets & Lies, The Thin Red Line, The Insider, The Sixth Sense, In the Bedroom, Gangs of New York, Seabiscuit, and Munich all had more or less comparable nomination tallies and went home with nothing). Otherwise, though, the critics didn't help her, beyond the rave reviews from several months ago: somehow, when prize season arrived, they only had eyes for Amy Ryan. She didn't have a Globe or a SAG. She isn't, remotely, a Hollywood elbow-rubber. She isn't "owed" in any way the Academy recognizes (and certainly not the way Ruby Dee is). She isn't the young thing of the moment. She didn't play a likeable character. She didn't play the character in a simply digestible way. Her part wasn't showy, though it was generously featured. The general public has a dim sense of her as the White Witch of Narnia, but little else. Why did she win? It's the performance, stupid, just like it was for Harden. Good enough to persuade voters on its own terms once they got around to seeing it, and good enough to qualify as the best winner in this category since the proximate wins of Peggy Ashcroft and Dianne Wiest in 1984 and 1986—if not the best since Vanessa Redgrave won in 1977, and in virtually the same dress, plus a left sleeve. For all the well-earned reputation of insiderism and errant, delayed sentiment that the Academy has accrued over time, they don't always vote that way, and when they don't, it's glorious.

Good Night, and Good Luck

In case you're wondering about my guesses for tomorrow's race, I've committed to Tony Stewart as the projected winner for the Auto Club 500 at the California Speedway, with backup calls on Greg Biffle and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., plus I'm throwing a wild card possibility to Joe Nemechek; true, he'll be starting in 43rd position, but Fantasy NASCAR obligates you to pull in one driver from the bottom of the barrel for each race.

Is everyone terrified yet? I actually do play Fantasy NASCAR, but only as a concession to my brother, the sportswriter, and no, I don't have any idea what I'm doing. But my team name, the Tracy Chapmen, is pretty much the best in the league. (I'm going to pause here for the full glory of the pun to roll to the back of the room.)

But you came for something else? Oh, right. After a monumentally frustrating three-week technical outage (long story, but I'm no longer too fond of the Domain Registry of America), this blog is up and running just in time to weigh in alongside Goatdog and Nathaniel and ModFab and QTA and EW on tomorrow night's likely winners. I'm not feeling too confident, I must say, and since I'm under a firm Monday deadline with a Brokeback Mountain essay, I can't embellish much. Because you all know I won't be writing tomorrow night. So here are my thoughts:

PICTURE No Country for Old Men (my vote: There Will Be Blood, because it pushes more and risks more, and has more virtuosic credentials than Juno)

DIRECTOR Joel and Ethan Coen, because they've never won, and to make sure they get something (my vote: Jason Reitman, because think how easily Juno could have been a She's All That or a Charlie Bartlett if he hadn't taken it so seriously and directed his cast so brilliantly)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE No End in Sight (my vote: No End in Sight, though Taxi to the Dark Side is also quite an accomplishment)

ACTRESS Julie Christie (my vote: Marion Cotillard, who could easily pull this off, and I wonder if Laura Linney couldn't as well, but with everyone else changing horses, I'm sticking with the Christie consensus that had built up until recently)

ACTOR Daniel Day-Lewis (my vote: Daniel Day-Lewis, though Tommy Lee Jones is a very close runner-up for me)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS Tilda Swinton, because MC needs to win something, and she has gathered momentum, even if Blanchett will make things hard for her (my vote: Tilda, as if you didn't know)

SUPPORITNG ACTOR Javier Bardem (my vote: Hal Holbrook, and for the performance, not just the sentiment)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Juno, even though I was calling for a Ratatouille upset not long ago (my vote: Juno)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, since the Coens won't need to double up (my vote: No Country for Old Men, I guess, in a narrow and ambivalent squeaker over There Will Be Blood)

CINEMATOGRAPHY The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, since it has the best gimmicky hook (my vote: There Will Be Blood)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM 12, though I can see Katyn or The Counterfeiters squeezing in there (my vote: let's wait and see the films, shall we?)

FILM EDITING The Bourne Ultimatum, since the other films split the art/prestige ballots (my vote: Into the Wild, which was comprehensive and thoughtful and also a little glib, consistent with its own protagonist)

SOUND MIXING Transformers, so that Kevin O'Connell can die a happy man (my vote: No Country for Old Men, in a walk, friendo)

ART DIRECTION Sweeney Todd, since I can't help spreading the wealth, though this will be close race against great-manor gewgawism and sand-blasted oil rigs (my vote: There Will Be Blood, with the unexpected inclusion of American Gangster growing on me as a runner-up)

COSTUME DESIGN Elizabeth: The Golden Age, because one green dress does not a fashion show make (my vote: Elizabeth: The Golden Age, though I'm not proud of it)

ORIGINAL SCORE Atonement, with The Kite Runner and Ratatouille still in contention (my vote: 3:10 to Yuma, with Michael Clayton not far behind; note my utter non-agreement with Oscar)

ORIGINAL SONG "Falling Slowly", because seriously (my vote: "Falling Slowly", because come on)

ANIMATED FEATURE Ratatouille (my vote: Persepolis, though I wanted to like both films better)

VISUAL EFFECTS Transformers, because big loud robots explosions (my vote: The Golden Compass, because gold dust animal mystical truth-telling bear armor)

SOUND EFFECTS EDITING No Country for Old Men, because everyone's praising it, so why not predict it (my vote: No Country for Old Men, because hissssssssssspop)

MAKEUP La Vie en rose (my vote: La Vie en rose, but then, you'd probably guessed that one, too)

Thank You for Voting

I was the fifth person to vote early this morning in my polling station: a charming fire station, even more charming for being two blocks from my house and along my normal route to work.

That's one doodle that (hopefully, probably, since I didn't see the name "Diebold" anywhere) can't be undid, home-skillet. Fingers crossed till tonight—and probably for weeks after, but we'll see how this goes!

Intermission: Go Talk in the Lobby

For work reasons, it'll be two or three days before I can post my thoughts on Best Ensemble, the next category due to arrive in the ongoing Best of 2007 feature. But speaking of ensembles, and while you're waiting to hear about those dazzling groups, why not head to the cocktail bar during intermission, where lots of people are talking Oscar? In fact, wait a minute: I recognize some of these people, and probably so do you! It's Day One of Nathaniel's Oscar symposium! I even see myself, plus a lot of people who share few of my reservations about There Will Be Blood, tremendous though it is, and also a lot of people (save for Sasha Stone) who like Juno a lot less than I still do, after two viewings.