Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog

Let Me Be Frank

2008-07-06T20:04:00.003-05:00

No, seriously—just for one day, let me be Frank Rich. Or at least let him hear my loud huzzah about this. He liked the movie more than I did, but our hearts and our angers are in the same places.

All Racist on the Western Coast

2008-07-02T09:51:00.005-05:00

Welcome to the third episode of Season One of Best Pictures from the Outside In. If you're just joining us—don't worry, you'll still count later on as a "vintage" fan from the infancy of this series!—Goatdog and Nathaniel and I are surveying Oscar's top prizewinners from inception forward and from this year backwards, leading to all kinds of bonkers juxtapositions... though episodes One and Two have convinced us, and hopefully you, that these arbitrary pairings can lead to fresh, lively takes on the movies. This week, we bunk up with All Quiet on the Western Front, a prestige adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel about young German soldiers working hard to stay alive in World War I, which was the Academy's favorite movie released between August 1, 1929, and July 31, 1930. We also run into Crash, Oscar's anointee from 2005, tracking 20+ characters through the mean, bile-spewing streets of modern LA. If these two films were mashed into one, you might call it...

Nick: So, this week the inevitable finally unfolds, twice over. On the one hand, for the first time in this series, Oscar ignites a major uproar with its choice of the top prizewinner. Even more typically of AMPAS, and at both ends of our historical double-helix, Best Picture goes to a movie that huffs and puffs along with a Worthy Message. Without dodging the issue completely, I'm inclined to steer clear of the whole Crash/Brokeback passion play, partially because it was all so recent and so heated that we hardly need another rehearsal: you all know how you feel, and so do we. Partially because I'm the host, and I wouldn't have voted for either one of those movies; given Oscar's choices, I was all about Capote and Munich that year. And partially because our goal is to reassess the movies, not the conditions or controversies that surrounded their victories.

So, with that caveat loosely in place - the First Amendment does, after all, still prevail on this blog - I think we might begin more fruitfully with the moralizing aims of All Quiet on the Western Front (war is hell, and the homefront has no idea!) and of Crash (contemporary racism is as horrible as it is pervasive, and you, the viewers, have no idea!). Neither film leaves any doubt about its motivating ideology, although they position themselves a little differently with regard to their didacticism. All Quiet... is brazenly anti-war, as expressed through its stomach-turning battlefield scenes as well as its dialogues and voiceovers—but the film is also intent on making huge forward leaps in realistic "style" and in technical sophistication. Considering how alert we were last week to The Broadway Melody's crude fascination with its own soundtrack, it's amazing that All Quiet...—so much more ambitious in scope, depth, sonic density, and especially camera movement—is only a year older. Director Lewis Milestone makes a huge case for All Quiet... as groundbreaking cinema, which Paul Haggis all but refuses to do with Crash. That film is formally and technically modest, almost TV-like, as though this in itself will make the movie's elaborately contrived dialogue and dramaturgy more "believable."

So, while we grab our first round of cocktails, I have some questions: did you guys feel that the grand scale and artistic ambition of All Quiet... or the almost anti-cinema aesthetics of Crash made you take their implied "messages" more to heart, or less so? What IS the message of Crash, anyway, and does the movie have an artistic identity apart from its rhetorical points? And if I can ask a more pointed question than we sometimes have in beginning these chats, is there a single scene or moment in either film that sums up how you think the movie works, or how you feel about the movie? (I'll keep quiet about my answers till after I've opened the floor.)

Go to it, you crazy lily-white crackers!

Nathaniel: I love that it took us until episode 3 to get to the Worthy Message film... although I fear we shan't ever be granted a two week leave again. We'll be abandoned on the front lines from here on out.

I'm glad you mentioned the anti-cinema aesthetic of Crash. It's one of the reasons I have a problem with it. I'm not predisposed to hating anti-cinema cinema but I almost never take it as seriously as the Movie-Movie. Even in cases where I like the former kind more than in this case, I can never get truly passionate about them. I think it's charitable that you view this deficiency as an aesthetic choice... I'm inclined to view such films as merely lacking in visual creativity or technical skill. So my answer to the first question is that I can't take Crash's message as seriously as All Quiet's, even before we get to the other problem: Racism is Wrong! is hypocritical in delivery. One of the things I respect a great deal about War is Wrong! is that its message is not compromised. It doesn't wallow in the thrills of the battle and victories like many supposed anti-war movies do. The War is Wrong! soldiers actually look distraught whenever they win OR lose... which I think marks a brave commitment to the Message first and foremost. It's not interested in having and eating its cake. Meanwhile, over in Racism is Wrong!, the players and audience seem to be blatantly pandered too whenever the occasion permits. So often the movie seems to be saying, "It's wrong but we all do it—and that doesn't make us bad people!" I think we need a YouTube mashup of Crash scenes set to Avenue Q's "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", pronto. The movie is similarly "Oops, my bad!"-forgiving, if much less witty in the delivery.

When thinking on Crash, it's not a scene but a line that careens into me. It's the often lampooned but interesting (to me at least) moment when whitey Sandra Bullock has her inchoate breakdown: "I'm angry all the time and I don't know why." I much prefer the movie when its notions of widespread psychosocial sickness are vaguely expressed. I think Crash is more effective in these fuzzier moments than when it hits any nail (black, white, brown or yellow) on the head. We, as humans, may like easy explanations and diagnosis but that doesn't mean they're good for us. Easy categorizations are part of the problem. If I have to choose a scene I'm going with the bookend of Michael Peña and the bedtime story of the magic cape. The first scene is a beauty since Peña is a sympathetic and fine actor. [Note: producer/star Don Cheadle ventures on the DVD commentary that Peña's performance is "arguably the best thing in the movie."] But the payoff, potent as it may be, is manipulative. It works but the aftertaste is gross. That's how Crash plays for me throughout. I think it's well meaning. I really do. It's the delivery that's the real problem.

Goatdog: The scene from Crash that best illustrates why I think that movie is a train wreck is Sandra Bullock's post-sprain embrace with her sometimes helpmeet, sometimes whipping Hispanic, Maria (played by Yomi Perry). Crash structures itself around a series of accidents—of wrong-place-wrong-time meetings, of "there are only five cops on active duty in LA" coincidences, and of genuine accidents proving that nothing is more unsafe than the home except the outside. These accidents both (1) provide fodder for people to dig out their Racist Thesaurus and Old-Timey Book of Creaky Insults, and (2) provide opportunities to realize the errors of their ways. So Sandra takes a tumble, and none of her self-obsessed (presumably white) friends will help her, but her savior, Saint Maria, rescues her from her beige cocoon, takes her to the hospital, and brings her tea.

How lovely! How loyal! You know, the Maria whom Bullock pays to help out, who would likely get fired if she did not help out. In this grand rapprochement between representatives of the Unaware Racist White Union and the Long-Suffering Hispanic Union, Paul Haggis doesn't see fit to give her a single closeup without Bullock, and after Bullock makes her silly declaration, doesn't show her face at all. By that time, she's a prop, not a person. What. the. fuck? Is he making some subversive statement about how Bullock's self-deluded epiphany isn't real? If so, why not at least one little closeup of Maria rolling her eyes? (We all know Ang Lee would have given Perry her own closeup.) It doesn't matter to Haggis what Maria thinks of this, because he's already dealt with what Hispanics think about race in his Michael Peña storyline. This, like Matt Dillon's rapprochement with Thandie Newton in the flames of the burning SUV, strikes me as completely false in so many ways: it illuminates the silliness of the film's reductively interlocking circle of characters, it proudly brandishes the film's reductive view of how people deal with race every day, and it posits a reductive solution in which we only have to viciously stub our toes while running for the teapot in order to have a grand epiphany about how we're racists but we're not bad people and there's hope for us yet.

Which brings me to All Quiet on the Western Front. You know, because it stands at the opposite pole from Crash's technical, moral, and thematic deficiencies. The one scene I'd choose as being emblematic of everything it does right with its technique and message is the recruits' first outing with the lovably ugly Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim) to lay barbed wire. What struck me was the screaming. When people are shot or struck by shrapnel in this film, they don't fall over on their side and die quietly: they scream, they run around, they tear at their faces, they cry, they're in agony, and their friends have to watch because there's nothing else they can do. When they try to help, it's useless—heroism is useless. Like Nathaniel said, it never deviates from this message, not for a second. I don't think audiences had seen a film deal with war this way before (because the sound is so important to the effectiveness), and it would be another 15 or so years before a film dealt with war this honestly again.

The bumper crop of early-30s antiwar films this one kicked off (many of them written by John Monk Saunders, who wrote Wings) weren't this realistic, and from what I remember of the early WW2 films that dealt with combat, they chose the "slight grimace, then fall over quietly" type of battle death. This scene also plays up Milestone's mastery of all the tools available to him as a filmmaker, and at times it's almost as if the creaky-early-talkie period didn't exist, that he was able to meld some of the impeccable technique of the late silents with all the possibilities of sound without losing anything from either side of that formerly impenetrable boundary between sound and silent. It's a legitimately great movie, one of the ten best winners of all time.

Nick: I'm glad you highlight a failure of Crash's editing, Mike, because I do find it galling that the two specific crafts for which Crash won Oscars—the writing and the cutting—are the two things it misjudges more often than anything else. This might seem like nitpicking, but for me a defining moment in the movie is when Don Cheadle's character barks at his mother over the phone that he's "having sex with a white woman," but rather than move closer to Jennifer Esposito's reaction or even hold the full shot where they are lying on the bed in real time, editor Hughes Winborne actually cuts to an arbitrarily different shot as Esposito gets off the bed. This means we don't experience the moment as the character does, in any way; instead, the screenplay digs in its heels for another righteous monologue where a character describes what is structurally wrong with what someone else just did/said. The coarseness of the editing here is botchy in exactly the same way (for me) as the moment you describe, Mike, and works against the film's occasional strength (I agree with Nathaniel here) at showcasing human behavior and vulnerability without always underlining what exactly is most troubling or wrong with the person or moment or event we've just witnessed.

	+		=
Offending Dialogue + Anti-Reaction Shot = Freestanding Lecture

That said, I don't always think Crash is one-dimensional or totally overt. I don't experience the Matt Dillon/Thandie Newton scene on the highway as a "rapprochement," for example, because I find both of their affects—hers especially, when she subtly shakes her head at the end of the scene—interestingly inscrutable. Some of the writing works, both in the rare understated moment ("You embarrass me") and even some of the florid ones, if you take the movie as a Eugene O'Neill-ish exercise in forcing characters to speak their subconscious thoughts aloud, rather than a snapshot of alleged "reality." And the actors frequently save the movie, or parts of the movie: Terrence Howard's painful apologies to the police, Shaun Toub's and Michael Peña's fight over the door and the lock, Loretta Devine calling office security but then holding them off to hear Matt Dillon out. Strong scenes, sharply played. I do have to give Crash credit for being punchy and vivid and occasionally quite bracing, for all the other times when it's tripping over itself.

But I'm short-shrifting All Quiet on the Western Front! Ditto on its conviction that war really is ghastly and intolerable. I also love the palpable violence of some of the social encounters (Himmelstoss the mailman, converted overnight into a defensive and hostile automaton) and even the camera movements (tracking back as the soldiers rush into their barracks for the first time, underscoring their excitement but also sort of retreating from their painful naïveté). I agree it's one of the best winners Oscar ever chose... but are we going too easy on it? Does it have a Saving Private Ryan-ish problem of getting weirdly talky in the second half? Compared to something as visually and cinematically robust as that horrible scene where the bunker caves in on itself and Franz Kemmerich (Ben Alexander) goes stir-crazy inside, the scenes where the soldiers discuss what war "really is" by the side of the river or where Lew Ayres wrestles internally with his own guilt at killing an enemy feel like a different and slightly lesser movie to me.

Nathaniel: I do think All Quiet gets talky to its (very slight) detriment but it was pointedly moving all the same. The film works best when it's visually conveying the message... like that simple but effective journey of the coveted bad-luck charm boots, or the absolutely stunning ending, which merely recycles a shot from earlier in the film but double exposes it to remind you of the cumulative losses of the movie. It's a gut punch but a humane one, I think. I was also, like Nick, amazed at its technical control. This is only a couple of years into sound filmmaking? They learned very very quickly in Hollywood. Or at least Lewis Milestone did.

But here's where I get all Lew Ayres post-war disillusioned on ya. Perhaps it's distasteful to be this cynical but I've seen too much of the annual Western Fronting. Western as in Hollywood, California. Don't these two movies paired (and other wins too) suggest that the technical mastery and aesthetic sensitivity of a film like All Quiet on the Western Front are rather irrelevant to its triumph on Oscar night. Doesn't The Message film always win because of group sympathies for The Message?

Goatdog: I agree that the talkiness of a few of the late scenes detracts from All Quiet, but only a little: yeah, the "let's put all the leaders in a circle and let them fight it out" bit is belabored, but it's such a small part of the film. By the time of Lew's alienating trip back home, his return to discover that just about everybody he knows is dead, his tragic reunion with Wolheim, and that ending, I had forgotten my issues with those few too-talky scenes. I can't put Lew's soliloquy to his dead French foxhole-mate in the same category, because even despite the sometimes creaky dialogue, it's one of the most horrific scenes in the movie, one that drives home the general awfulness of everything Lew's been through. That dead guy sitting there with that half-smirk on his face... shudder. Plus, I just took a break from viewing next week's offering, and my god, All Quiet on the Western Front is a miracle, hallelujah! Although healing the problems of the other talkies around it is not part of its legitimate claim for canonization.

But with Crash, it's the other way around: the general morass of the hapless shooting and editing (my favorite [read, least favorite] being Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton fighting in their apartment, and Haggis deciding to shoot it through the patio doors because he's seen better filmmakers do that, but doesn't stop to wonder why it might work in some cases but not in others), the general preachiness and obviousness of the dialogue and scene construction, etc., make the good moments—I'll admit that there are a few, some of which are really powerful—seem to disappear.

What has Oscar done to make you so cynical, Nathaniel? I'd like to imagine that voters are familiar with their craft and they recognize outstanding work when they see it. That's the way it works, right? But this pairing (and so many other "message" winners, good and bad) (and, for that matter, their repeated demonstrations of their lack of familiarity with their craft) could suggest that they're blind to anything but the message, at least when they go for a message film. That's a therapy session I'd love to eavesdrop on. But at least sometimes, as we saw last week, they can look past clumsy sermonizing (like Babel) and go for something that seizes the brass ring through sheer, ballsy technique. Looking through the list of films we'll be addressing in the coming months, we'll be wondering a lot about what specific motives led to the choice Oscar made in a given year, even when, as here, they made the right choice. Sometimes it's a strong message or phenomenal technique. Or vast, overwhelming scale. Or a comeback vehicle for a director who doesn't get enough credit. Basically, Oscar needs something huge and noticeable to pin its medal to. It might be fun at the end to try to divide the winners into categories: technique, message, scale, comeback. And Ernest Borgnine.

Reader: Don't front. Don't be all quiet. Do you agree with us that the Milestone film is a milestone? Are you angry at Crash all the time, and do you know why? Though Oscar may have said it all with that interpretive dance of "In the Deep" before a blazing car, leave us your impressions in the form of a Comment...

Stats: All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for four Oscars, winning Best Picture and Best Director. Crash was nominated for six, winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing in addition to Best Picture.

Tags:
Currently: Goatdog's and Nathaniel's posts on this week's films
Previously: ep.1: Wings & No Country; ep.2: Broadway Melody & Departed

Best Pictures from the Outside In: '29/'06

2008-06-25T15:10:00.005-05:00

(The Broadway Melody + The Departed = Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd)

Today marks the second installment of the new Best Pictures from the Outside In feature that Nathaniel and Goatdog and I decided to inaugurate this summer—born largely out of a phone conversation Nathaniel and I had about our awe (mixed with jealousy) that Goatdog has so few Best Pic nominees left to see, and our collective urge to revisit winners that we each saw way, way back in our proto-Oscargeek childhoods. Plus, none of us could wait to see The Life of Émile Zola again, and this project seemed to furnish the right alibi.

Goatdog and Nathaniel both rang in the feature last week, when we jabbered about the earliest victor, Wings, and the most recent, No Country for Old Men. I missed my chance at joining in the full, six-pompom salute to our new endeavor, but suffice it to say: if you had told me in 8th grade, when I was still renewing Inside Oscar every two weeks at the public library but had only seen ten or twelve of the movies in the book, that I would one day have two friends who wanted to make this same tiptoe through the AMPAS tulips with me, and obsess over all the same talking points and triumphs and injustices, I would have been pulling my jaw off the floor and my head out of the clouds. And not just because I would have had no idea what the "internet" was.

This week's conversation, hosted by Goatdog, covers our varying levels of agitation about 1929's The Broadway Melody and our universal enthusiasm for 2006's The Departed, even if we all want to recast Jack Nicholson. After you're done reading the discussion, hopefully dropping us a comment, and pitying my predicament of never making a single graphic to rival Goatdog's or Nathaniel's, head back to my main site, where I'm archiving our march through Oscartime. I've got links to all of our discussions, and to my own grades and reviews of the winners, riders at the top of those reviews that commemorate each year's race (including deserving winners and non-nominees), and the required bouquet of gratuitous lists.

Enjoy! And visit this space next week, when we revisit the winners from 1930 and 2005 and inevitably rehash one of the great, tear-inducing miscarriages in Oscar's entire back-catalog. By which I mean, of course, the soul-sickening nomination of the gruesomely stodgy 1929 biopic Disraeli. Thank God it lost. (Hey, what did you think I was talking about?)

Let Them Eat Birthday Cake!

2008-06-13T20:25:00.002-05:00

Back in effect, y'all. I still have some spring-quarter papers and projects to assess and then my final grades to tabulate and submit, but this website is eager to spring back to life. I meant to get an early start one week ago, to commemorate Nathaniel's birthday—even though certain snakes in the grass have recently informed me that too many of my recent posts are all about Nathaniel. But, I just survived yet another apartment move, and though nothing (amazingly!) was broken or lost, my internet connection was scuttled until about 48 hours ago. So here, better late than never, is the latest addition to the Best Actress pages. Far be it from me to imply how old Nathaniel just turned, but let's just say that I have selected 1938 as a fitting year of tribute—and all the more fitting because we saw White Banners for the first time together in my Hartford apartment, we both love Bette Davis, and we both really love Norma Shearer, earning her sixth and final Best Actress nomination for Marie Antoinette.

Bette copped the Oscar, but to learn who wins my vote, you'll have to click here. The usual poll has already been supplied to determine who you think should have won from Oscar's list, but I'm playing it a bit coy about my own favorite performances from that year, which is also slowing down the other two polls. I rented a lot of 1938 movies in preparation for this Nathaniel-a-thon, and despite wind or rain or sleet or U-Haul or AT&T, I intend to finish out my viewing list... or at least get a little closer. So, tune back in for my own 1938 Dream Team, and some remarks about Luise Rainer, Irene Dunne, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn x 2, Margaret Sullavan Redux, Sally Eilers, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck, and several other ladies who were bright lights in '38! (And it's never too late to wish Nathaniel a happy birthday!)

What's Going On?

2008-05-28T23:05:00.005-05:00

You know, we got to find a way...
To bring some lovin' here to-day-ay-ay...

But really, in all seriousness: what is going on? And what does it have to do with June 18? Nathaniel knows. And so do I. And as Yoda once rasped to a blond, bland proto-Jedi, There is – another.....

Cannespotting

2008-05-24T11:09:00.005-05:00

With awards announcements coming tomorrow, here are my quick guesses as to the Cannes anointees:

PALME D'OR Gomorrah, Italy
GRAND JURY PRIZE 24 City, China
JURY PRIZE Waltz with Bashir, Israel
These are the three movies I can't see not winding up here, for reasons of overall critical and audience response, proclivities of the jurors, and contemporary political relevance. Maybe Che could make a run in here, or either The Class or A Christmas Tale could work into the GJP or Jury Prize slots, but otherwise, I'm feeling pretty good about this group.

DIRECTOR Steven Soderbergh, Che
(alt. Arnaud Desplechin, A Christmas Tale)

ACTRESS Martina Gusman, Leonera/Lion's Den
(alt. Arta Dobroshi, Lorna's Silence)
Sure, Angelina could spoil, but I'd be surprised

ACTOR Benicio Del Toro, Che
(alt. Tony Servillo, Il Divo)

SCREENPLAY E. Bourdieu and A. Desplechin, A Christmas Tale
(alt. Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York)

TECHNICAL GRAND PRIZE Mychael Danna/score, Adoration
(alt. César Charlone/cinematography, Blindness)

FIPRESCI PRIZE Gomorrah, Italy
(alt. Three Monkeys, Turkey)
The international critics' prize, as likely to coincide with the Palme as to endorse a solid competition fave that isn't otherwise a contender (the last three winners were 4 Months..., Climates, and Caché)

PRIZE OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY Lorna's Silence, Belgium
(alt. Gomorrah, Italy)
The clerical/social justice prize, though not narrowly defined, and not always awarded (omitted last year, and conferred upon Babel, Caché, and The Motorcycle Diaries in the three years preceding)

COMPETITION FILMS IN THE ORDER I'M EAGER TO SEE THEM The Headless Woman; Synecdoche, New York; Che; Two Lovers; 24 City; Gomorrah; A Christmas Tale; The Changeling/The Exchange; Waltz with Bashir; The Frontier of Dawn; Blindness; The Class/Entre les murs; Lorna's Silence; Serbis; Il Divo; Lion's Den; Three Monkeys; Adoration; Linha de Passe; My Magic; Delta; Palermo Shooting

Photo from Gomorrah, © 2008 Fandango/Rai Films

TGFN

2008-05-23T13:28:00.002-05:00

That's a mash-up of TGIF (yay!) and TTFN (till soon!), but it also stands for "Thank Goodness for Network" and "Thank God for Nathaniel." I love to link up when I read a piece of film writing that really excites me, and Nathaniel's brilliant, witty, and gorgeously modulated take on Network is a total grabber. It deserves a hot rating in the triple digits and a 100 share.

If When I resume that long-interrupted favorites countdown, as I keep promising, I'm going to have to own up to the passage of time by reshuffling the order a bit, and dropping in some more recent fetish objects ... which also means phasing out a few of the originals. Network will be one of the titles that will have to fight for its life on that list—my most recent visit, to prep for my own write-up, dropped the film a peg or two in my esteem. But, if Network winds up in what Faye Dunaway's Diana Christensen so memorably calls "the sh*thouse," I'll leave you to wonder whether I really didn't like it enough to keep it in, or whether I just want to retire my essay because I like Nathaniel's so much better. (The only point where we disagree? So long as Long Day's Journey into Night and Dog Day Afternoon are around, Network won't ever be Lumet's best movie.)

Photo © 1976 MGM/United Artists

FlickPicker in the Dark

2008-05-22T10:28:00.006-05:00

Are you an academic? Does your school run on the quarter system? Is work raining from the sky every day? Yesterday, I thought all I had to worry about were my two classes to teach (about Children of Men and the egregiously out-of-print The Portrait of a Lady, so no complaints there), and the two stacks of essays I had to grade and return, and the senior theses I needed to read and write reports about, and the 25-page report I have to write for Friday, and the separate public talks I have to write and give next Wednesday and Thursday, and the packing of my apartment that needs to be finished by next week in order to move on May 31... Who knew I would leave the office with a new talk to write for next Friday, and another batch of prize-contender essays to judge (and write reports about), and a new batch of late-breaking admissions files to read (and write reports about)? Everyone who has ever wondered what your professors do when they aren't teaching or answering (or not answering) e-mails, or everyone who hopes to be a professor and wonders what that's like: smell the roses!

At least I love my job. (Cue Emily Blunt: "I love my job... I love my job...")

But, I must say, till the quarter's over in early June, it's still going to be slow going at this blog, which means I haven't gotten to say anything about my annual springtime obsession, the Cannes Film Festival, presided over this year with a steely glare and a messy haircut by my life partner. I am addicted to all the news flowing from the Croisette. As ever, the mainline for buzz, news, and early reviews is GreenCine Daily, which has assembled this index to all the Cannes-related articles, most of them updated as the days pass and more responses trickle in. Sounds like my gal Lucrecia and my buddy James hit a few snags, and Steven and Clint prompted responses all over the board, too. (No one even knows what Clint's movie is called anymore, or how Steven's will be released.) I'm a lot more interested in that Israeli animated doc than I had thought I'd be, and Arnaud Desplechin hit a home-run with every critic and audience member I've read, but I can't say it sounds like Sean's kind of thing. (I'm guessing it's headed for a Director or Screenplay citation, or maybe a Jury Prize, even if it's the movie lots of people like the best. See Volver, etc.) I'd be a little frustrated if the Dardennes copped another trophy, though their film sounds quite good (surprise!); I've somehow never seen a Jia Zhangke film; and I'm somewhere between indifferent to openly mistrustful of Walter Salles, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and mob movies. Out of the Competition, I'm most excited about the triumphant Terence Davies film, this coruscating film about Liberian child soldiers, and the Carax segment of the odd-sounding Tokyo!. And I love that the trailer for the upcoming Spike Lee Joint, Miracle at St. Anna, apparently wowed a lot of people.

You can use this schedule to see what's still coming up in Competition; I'm probably most eager to hear about the Kaufman and the Cantet at this point. Since I haven't seen any of it or been able to write more thorough posts as we go along, I can at least direct you back to two full reviews of two of my all-time favorite Palme winners, and shorter reviews of two others.

There's MUCH more to say, too. I still need to follow up on my exploits and juror deliberations at the Indianapolis Film Festival, which I promise I will not pass over; it'll just be a sort of Film Comment-style dossier on a festival that's a month or two in the past by press time. But I won't forget. I wanted to offer a sweet, properly worshipful elegy for the retired Modern Fabulousity, and a delirious description of getting to join Goatdog as he screened the first of only ten Best Picture nominees he has left to see from Oscar's entire back-catalogue. We both feel confident that things'll only get better from here. I was tagged for this book meme that I still haven't answered, I have the Best of 2007 to finish and the Favorites Countdown to resume, and more Best Actress races to judge and performers to profile. Keep your ear to the ground, dear reader, and pray for mid-June, when I Shall Be Released. And Relocated. And Resplendent in All Things Movie.

Photos © 2000 Zentropa Entertainment/Fine Line Features; © 2008 Aqua Films/El Deseo; and © 1967 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

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

2008-05-13T23:08:00.009-05:00

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

2008-04-27T23:18:00.004-05:00

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

2008-04-26T16:15:00.004-05:00

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...

2008-04-26T01:01:00.005-05:00

...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...

2008-04-17T15:07:00.003-05:00

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?

2008-03-25T17:23:00.008-05:00

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

2008-03-17T03:17:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-13T16:05:00.004-05:00

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

2008-03-05T00:41:00.003-06:00

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

2008-03-01T22:51:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-02-29T17:59:00.006-06:00

(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

2008-02-26T11:03:00.003-06:00

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.