It's Hard Out Here for a Gay Cowboy Movie

I'm not sure what to say about the surprise victory of Crash as Oscar's Best Picture of 2005. I don't even know what's been said, or if there's anything left to say—as a rule, I stay off of most Oscar-focused websites that aren't written by the close friends whose hype I actually believe, most of whom I watched the show with last night, and most of whom were clearly devastated. (Note: I wrote this entry a day before I could post it.) I've stayed off even their sites today, because I'm still sorting out my own response. I have to admit that, as agnostic about Brokeback as I am, and as cognizant as I was of Crash's sharp resurgence during the balloting period, I was still caught utterly off-guard by its victory, and I still haven't settled into any emotion beside surprise.

The truth is, I like and admire Crash and Brokeback Mountain about equally as films, and I think they're comparable as political platforms. Crash chases its human canvas of class- and race-based suspicion into some impressively bracing exchanges of dialogue, however much it veers at times into an almost embarrassing lack of aesthetic finesse. Brokeback Mountain distills its potent essence of sexuality- and class-based emotional prisons into some haunting tableaus of tragic reticence, however much it veers at times into an almost embarrassing surfeit of self-beatification. They both engender more than just devotion in their biggest fans, but a kind of epiphanic and deeply personal release; others are left utterly cold. I didn't feel more or less "manipulated" by either project, and I'm not sure that manipulation is such a terrible thing in art (or if it's ever even absent from art). Brokeback invests such compassionate confidence in its binding argument, that repressed desire wrecks not just couples but entire vicinities of people, that it permits itself some rather maximal emphases within its pretense of restraint. Crash also errs frequently on the side of exclamation, and occasionally, in its case, on the side of idiocy, though for all it can seem like self-flagellating liberal agitprop, I haven't yet heard a convincing one-line summary of the film's contentions, and some of the urban dismay it so amply uncorks more than justifies, to my mind, its tinniest rhetorical gaffes.

Everyone who cares about the Oscars will take his or her own measure of the films' respective merits, but even those who harbor no doubt, in either direction, about which is the better film do not seem to be responding to the Best Picture outcome in those terms. I know the theories that are probably flying, the ones that felt the most immediate and the most hurtful last night at Nathaniel's party, in a room literally full of gay men who were all expecting a watershed cultural moment. Even as one of the few who liked other movies better, I was surprised by how summary and instantaneous the loss of Brokeback felt, but at risk of willful naïveté or quietism about the perceived homophobia underlying Crash's win, I would like to submit the following, just as a partial tonic... not because I think I know better than anyone else, or because I doubt that homophobic discomfort with Brokeback's premise probably factored in, but just to assert that even if that's true, I don't think it's a full or even necessarily a primary explanation.

1. Two-for-One In the forty years from 1956 through 1995, the Academy only split the Picture and Director prizes five times, or roughly once every eight years. In the eight years since 1998, however, they've made the same split four more times, or once every two years. Clearly AMPAS voters are cultivating a taste for recognizing two films they love by divvying up their two top awards, virtually always by giving the more critically certified film the Director trophy: Saving Private Ryan, Traffic, The Pianist, and Brokeback, as compared to the more ephemeral but widely ingratiating Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, Chicago, and Crash. Clearly there was strong Academy support for both Brokeback and Crash this year, and just as clearly, neither film appealed widely enough to power a sweep: Crash couldn't win a Song Oscar over a rap track about pimping, and the determinedly picturesque Brokeback couldn't swipe Cinematography over the disturbingly vacuous Memoirs of a Geisha, which won as many Oscars as Crash and Brokeback did (and King Kong, too, for that matter). I'm betting that both films inspired fierce factional support but not consensus enthusiasm. I seriously doubt Crash nicked the win by very much of a margin, especially as it wouldn't have required more than a few fence-sitters to lean the outcome in this direction. (I'm thinking that no one, no one, voted for Brokeback and Haggis.)

2. DVD Palooza Crash's early release date would have been a liability for a different kind of film, but for a word-of-mouth hit that friends pass to friends, and that sports easy points of entry for all kinds of viewers, it was surely a major asset. Academy members have had months, not weeks, to watch Crash on DVD, even before Lions Gate's carpet-bomb strategy with its DVD screeners during January and February, and not to mention that Crash retains its basic virtues on a small screen while Brokeback loses some of its own. For all the railing we heard last night against DVD culture, it's clearly shaping Academy tastes and behaviors as much as those of the public.

Note, too, that I am not necessarily arguing that voters who watched Crash, on DVD or otherwise, didn't watch Brokeback. But the chance to watch Crash earlier and more often; to have it be the film you watch because your friend or colleague exhorts you to, instead of the film you watch because it's a front-runner and it arrived in the mail; to have it be the film that seeps in and lingers, overriding the glut of movies you might be watching in the short space of awards season... this is a formidable advantage, especially for a film whose appeal rests entirely on empathetic connection, a gut-level response to contemporary life (and in the city where most voters are living and watching, no less).

3. Critics Groups Are Not Crystal Balls Oscar voters are people who vote their minds and hearts, and who are largely sure they know movies better than critics do, notwithstanding annual embarrassments like the Narnia Makeup citation. That Brokeback swept so many critics' groups and even the Guild groups (minus, crucially, the enormously influential Screen Actors Guild) needn't imply a huge amount in terms of the film's Oscar destiny, though it sure seemed that way. Ang Lee, having missed a Director nod for Sense and Sensibility and a widely predicted Director trophy for Crouching Tiger, to say nothing of Oscar's unceremonious rejection of The Ice Storm, is clearly not a unanimous pet of AMPAS—whereas, given Million Dollar Baby's triumphs last year, Haggis' writerly brand of morbid fatalism quite clearly plays to the group's appetites. It was always going to be close, even on grounds of artistic sensibilities. Moreover, the sheer number of critics' prizes won by Brokeback Mountain can be a misleading argument, both because there are so many more critics groups in existence now than there were even ten years ago, and because the smaller critics groups are even bigger copycats of each other than the Academy is of any of them.

4. And Yes, They Might Be Homophobic ...and anyone who is, or who just wasn't taken or moved by Lee's movie, wouldn't likely make the error of throwing a vote to certain bridesmaids Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck., or Munich. Anyone with a Brokeback beef could only look to Crash as a viable trump card.

So, adding all of this together, I don't know what, or whether, to make anything of Crash's come-from-behind Oscar coup except to say that in retrospect—fully admitting that I was as dumbfounded as anyone in the moment of its victory—it doesn't seem quite so unaccountable, whether or not Hollywood homophobia is ascribed as a motivation. I am positive that Hollywood, and the AMPAS voters in particular, are appreciably more conservative than their popular-media reputation as bastions of political and sexual radicalism would have us believe. Then again, though, the kind of conservatism that I expect predominates in Hollywood—a bottom-line conservatism eager for new niche markets, a self-congratulatory conservatism that enjoys the pathos of subversive subjects well-accommodated into benign and pretty packages like Brokeback's—could easily have endorsed Lee's film, if they really felt passionate about the picture. I'm just not sure that they did, and I'm not comfortable with assuming that sexual or political attitudes wholly explain the gulf between admiration (three wins, after all) and adoration (which no single film this year seems to have inspired).

And let's not forget, too, that even if we're totally displacing the myth that the Academy endorses the "Best" and focusing solely on their role as arbiters of the zeitgeist—and yes, I realized on Monday night that I really wanted their seal of approval, however dubious and no matter the film, to grace an accomplished and popular gay movie—that those of us, God help us, who measure social progress in Hollywood by the yardstick of the Academy came away with quite a few victories. For all the hoopla when Halle and Denzel won their dual Oscars in '01, where's the excitement that a non-white filmmaker has finally won Best Director? And doesn't Crash possess by far the most multicultural cast of any Best Picture winner, making a strong case for more films to be written and cast across the spectrum of race? It's easy to see actors, that massive plurality of the Oscar voters, being eager to champion that kind of cause, and if, as a white gay man, I didn't feel so immediately partial to the plights of gay representation, I might have had a clearer head through the weeks of Oscar build-up that a film with white American, Asian-American, African-American, Latino and Latina, and Arab-American leads was a strong dark horse for the top prize. Yes, I'd like for Crash to be better: on my own gradient of historical Best Picture winners, it hovers alongside films like Marty, Terms of Endearment, The French Connection, and Rocky, which exert a certain kind of competent populist appeal within quite evident limitations of style and form. Brokeback would have fallen into just the same zone, even though I can see now that for personal and communal reasons, I would have been happier to watch it join the constellation. But honestly, the grudge I feel about this is not very large, and the homophobia that may or may not play into it has nothing like the degree or the weight of much more destructive homophobias that are evident in so many other places. This isn't to step on the toes of anyone else's hurt feelings, especially people whose hurt feelings matter a lot to me, and whose reasons for being hurt I so fully relate to. But this is just my 2¢.

More Oscar responses later.

Oscar Anomie

In which the sad and peculiar truth is revealed that I just don't care much about this year's Academy Awards. Every year I look forward to writing the Oscar prediction features on my website, but this year, aside from having no time, I just haven't had any inclination. There have been worse Oscar years, but none in recent memory that have left me so frankly apathetic about this year's big show. I'm still trying to understand this, but here are my best guesses:

1. Brokeback As time goes by, I like the prohibitive favorite in this year's top races less and less. And I feel bad about this, because as a progressive cultural marker, I want to be excited about it. If a big gay love story is about to win Best Picture at the Oscars, I'd love to feel like cheering. And the movie's okay, an easy trade up from early 00s Best Picture winners like Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. In fact, Million Dollar Baby is the only Picture victor of the whole decade that I've found all that moving, though Chicago was good and plucky, and I'll take the Return of the King win as an oblique nod to The Fellowship of the Ring. But that's just the thing with Brokeback Mountain: it isn't the best, it isn't the worst, and its competence feels neither engagingly plummy nor aesthetically ambitious. Nothing in the film has the charge of the premise; subversive subject aside, the movie is just as determinedly middlebrow and almost as domesticated as traditional bait like The Cider House Rules. To me, everything impressive about it also feels glassed-off and distant. As it has loped to the forefront of the competition, its own remoteness has come to define the whole derby. (It hasn't helped that none of the key players—not the fratty and giggle-prone Ledger and Gyllenhaal, not the perpetually scowling Williams or the vapid cockatoo Anne Hathaway, not self-serious writers Ossana and McMurtry or the chirpily apolitical Ang Lee—have inspired any affection as podium personalities.)

2. Best Actress This category, perennially my favorite, is at best a compromise solution. Knightley, winning as she is, is beautifully courted by the camera and woven in by the editing. Considered in the abstract, apart from all the pristine favors done her by the film, what's special in the performance fades a bit. Huffman's proficiency feels a little cold, once you're out of the theater and away from Transamerica's thin, homespun charms. Theron's stuck in a frightened film that seems to cut away from her own best ideas about the character; Dench is an instant irrelevance. And then there's Witherspoon. The almost certain winner has one sterling scene—her first, slightly hoarse barroom rencontre with Cash—but the role is written within hoary limits, and there's every reason for her to fall back on her usual diet of knitted brows and saucer faces, which is just what she does. Voting for any of them feels like voting for John Kerry. Most years, even the lean ones, at least have a Moore in Far from Heaven or a Theron in Monster to inspire idolatry; sometimes, like last year, the leading women outstrip the men without breaking a sweat. This year's bum crop just feels inert.

3. I Don't Even Feel Like Continuing Who needs this? I don't feel as bilious toward this year's awards as I'm sounding like I am. Honestly, I'm just indifferent. But this is what happens every time I start writing about them, or even thinking about writing about them. (Cue Sandra Bullock: "I'm whiny all the time, and I don't know why!")

To resist this slide into grouchiness, I'd like to salute the nominees that do make me feel proud to watch the show, and have a little of that Academy magic attached to them. I wish there were more of them, but these'll do for an Honor Roll of the legitimately Oscarable:

Best Picture
Capote

Best Director
Bennett Miller, Capote
Steven Spielberg, Munich
(the latter for the film's wild ambitions and strongest passages, forgiving its lapses—it's the one political "issue" movie of the year that feels genuinely courageous, pushing itself to all of its own edges)

Best Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
(Ledger has slipped a bit in my regard, and Strathairn is strait-jacketed by Clooney's stunningly narrow conception, but I will say that Phoenix unexpectedly improved on second view—a truly promising performance in need of a more daring director. Like, say, Bennett Miller.)

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Junebug
Catherine Keener, Capote
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Original Screenplay
Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale
(the ending notwithstanding)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Dan Futterman, Capote
Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, Munich

Best Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki, The New World
(by many leagues the year's best nomination, in any race)

Best Original Score
Dario Marianelli, Pride & Prejudice
(judicious and delicious understatement, perfectly matched to the film)

Best Original Song
"Travelin' Thru" from Transamerica

Best Sound
War of the Worlds

Best Sound Effects Editing
War of the Worlds

For the record, I'm predicting most of the same winners that everyone else is, but they go like this: Picture/Brokeback Mountain, Director/Lee, Actress/Witherspoon, Actor/Hoffman, Supporting Actress/Adams, Supporting Actor/Giamatti, Original Screenplay/Crash, Adapted Screenplay/Brokeback Mountain, Cinematography/Brokeback Mountain, Foreign-Language Film/Tsotsi, Film Editing/The Constant Gardener, Art Direction/Good Night, and Good Luck., Costume Design/Memoirs of a Geisha, Original Score/The Constant Gardener, Original Song/"Travelin' Thru" Sound/Walk the Line, Sound Effects/War of the Worlds, Visual Effects/King Kong, Makeup/The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Documentary Feature/Murderball, Documentary Short/God Sleeps in Rwanda, Animated Feature/Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Live Action Short Film/Six Shooter, Animated Short/9

Forget Those Other Film Awards

You've waited patiently enough, right? And you're tired of what Addison DeWitt calls "that film society," which thinks the pudgy and generic Walk the Line is a triumph of editing and the smudgy faces of Cinderella Man an exemplar of on-screen makeup? Or are you just ready for another list of equal and opposite biases, waving a flag for the unsung, and sometimes for the ballyhooed, and occasionally for the widely reviled?

O, lucky day! Here are the Nick's Flick Picks Honorees for 2005, the one (imaginary) black-tie event where Terrence Howard and Todd Solondz are seated together, where the (imaginary) papparazzi crane for the best red-carpet action shots of Hippolyte Girardot and Juliette Welfling, where Best Sound is about dexterity and not merely decibels, and where everyone (imaginarily) goes home happy, because no one ever wins!

Oscar Nomination Reactions

I didn't even set my alarm clock, woke up only five minutes before the announcements, dashed off the predictions that I abandoned last night, and proceeded to see how terribly I had mind-read the Academy. But this, in large part, was a good thing.

HAPPILY:

* The New World for Best Cinematography! Mark those ballots now, people.

* I love years where they spread the wealth. Brokeback leads with eight, the fewest nods for a front-runner since American Beauty in '99. Also, the categories do not just slavishly mirror one another (even where they usually do, like between Art Direction and Costumes, or Picture and Film Editing).

* Terrence Howard gives me someone to root for solidly in Best Actor, but AMPAS didn't go overboard with a double-nod, as I thought they might (for his Supporting work in Crash)

* Only three nominees for Best Song! AMPAS knows a bum year when it happens, and they didn't even fall for the Mel Brooks stunt of scribbling off a new song... a cheat that worked for Chicago and, much worse, for Phantom.

* A big deal: no Editing nomination for the Best Picture front-runner, Brokeback Mountain, which I think is just as it should be. Way too little connecting material holding the film together as it continues, and in my mind, a Zulema-style smackdown to Ang Lee for switching editors. (The late, brilliant Geraldine Peroni and Dylan Tichenor are hard to argue with, but where's the loyalty? Was Tim Squyres just busy?)

* No Walk the Line for Best Picture! I didn't think this would happen anyway, but I'm still jazzed that it didn't.

* I had predicted the Capote and Munich Best Picture slots for Cinderella Man and The Constant Gardener, and not only do I think the Academy chose much the better films, they're actually my two faves in the lineup. (I'm surprised how pleased I'm feeling for the Munich crowd; that strange film has really lingered well with me.)

* No Shopgirl sneak attacks. (I was worried about Adapted Screenplay.)

* No Cheadle or Hoskins emptily taking up space in Supporting Actor.

* No overestimation of Narnia in the tech categories.

* Howl's Moving Castle over Chicken Little and Madagascar for Animated Film.

* Amy Adams keeps Junebug alive in popular film memory.

* Woody Allen can have his Screenplay nod for Match Point, but the Academy didn't fall for the myth of his resurgent abilities any more than that.

* Tech-group excitement over Geisha did not translate into any above-the-fold nominations. By contrast, Pride & Prejudice worked a little of its magic all over the place, from Actress to Art Direction to Original Score (though, sadly, no Screenplay nod).

TRAVESTIES:

* I'm still not over the exclusion of Grizzly Man, even though it dropped from competition over a month ago.

* Canonization of unremarkable acting: Giamatti, Phoenix, Dench, Gyllenhaal, Hurt

* The North Country gals are better than people who haven't seen the movie are likely to assume, but this still feels like excessive praise

* No New World for Art Direction, Costume Design, or Makeup? Um, okay.

* Indeed, the Makeup derby is absurd. Hayden was looking ragged in Star Wars, Episode III (more than necessary, I mean), Narnia wasn't all that accomplished... and Cinderella Man???

* Crash, a film I respected quite a lot when I saw it, has been souring lately in my memory, and all the nods, even though I predicted them, are for some reason damning it further in my mind. Gonna hafta rent that one again.

Everything That's Wrong with This Year's Awards Season

Zhang Ziyi is nominated for an NAACP Image Award. I know you don't technically have to be African-American to qualify for these things, but, just... I mean. Doesn't this just seem like some kind of last straw in some over-active publicist's carpet-bombing of awards-voting bodies? (In another note to the NAACP nominators: that Best Actor slot you doled out to Laurence Fishburne in Assault on Precinct 13 or Shemar Moore in Diary of a Mad Black Woman might have hung a little better on, say, Jeffrey Wright in Syriana.)

Anyway, it's a crazy busy week around here, but I really will try to scrape together some Oscar nomination predictions by Tuesday morning. It would help if I cared about any of this year's front-runners. Aside from outside shots for Joan Allen, Terrence Howard, Jeff Daniels, Maria Bello, or Amy Adams, or anything for The New World on the technical side, it's hard to even think of a nomination I'd truly be excited by. I always thought it would be a grand day when David Cronenberg finally made the Directors' list, which I expect him to, but I just don't dig A History of Violence enough to get jazzed about even that prospect—and even at that, I'd take him in a cake walk over Lee, Clooney, Meirelles, Spielberg, Haggis, or, for God's sake, Woody Allen or James Mangold.

Whatever. I'll throw something together, but in a turn of events so mind-bogglingly mismatched to everything I thought I knew and understood about my life, I am waaaaay more eager to find out who gets Auf Wiedersehen'd on Wednesday night than I am to watch Good Morning, America on Tuedsay at 8:30am.

SAG Diary

Woulda live-blogged, but my broadband cord doesn't reach.

8:01 Why do I love S. Epatha Merkerson so much? Happily, she makes up for Patricia Heaton.

8:02 People can say what they want about Thandie Newton's acting, but is there any real argument about how gorgeous she is?

8:03 Also sssssssmoking tonight: Patrick Dempsey (duh), and Catherine Keener

8:04 I'm so done with hearing the whole Crash trope about "people who reside in the same city but only touch accidentally"; if Match Point hadn't rolled up with that unbearable and relentless tennis metaphor, it would easily be the most overdone conceit of the year.

8:05 Where is Nina Garcia when you need her to trim the ribbon off the front of Eva Longoria's otherwise lovely dress?

8:06 ACTRESS (TV - DRAMA) Doesn't Patricia Arquette always look like she's about to retract her head back into her shell? Prediction: Oh; Win: Oh, who can't walk in her shoes but looks real purty. And I'm always about the group shout-outs, even if none will ever be as good as Camryn Manheim's "This one's for the fat girls!"

8:09 Is Ted Danson blushing about Felicity Huffman's joke about wanting to flirt with him? I mean, look at that shit-eating grin. I feel so sad for him.

8:11 ACTOR (TV - DRAMA) Prediction: Laurie; Win: Sutherland, who not only remains preternaturally handsome from year to year, but is always beautifully dressed and always exceptionally gracious in his speeches. Seriously, did anyone watching Flatliners or The Lost Boys see this dapper re-incarnation anywhere on the horizon?

8:15 For months, Cinderella Man has been evincing the single most desperate save-this-flop ad campaign I've ever seen. Now, on this ad for Cinderella Man on ComCast pay-per-view, they actually exhort you to "Rent the movie today, and pause or fast-forward during all your favorite knockout scenes!" Wtf? What if I want to pause at the moment when Renée Zellweger opens her eyes?

8:17 I am really psyched about the Hustle & Flow Ensemble Cast nomination; if the Capote cast weren't so exceptionally smart, subtle, and well-coordinated, I'd vote Hustle no question.

8:21 ENSEMBLE CAST (TV - DRAMA) Prediction: Lost; Win: Lost, who clearly knew this was coming

8:24 SUPPORTING ACTRESS (FILM) Chris Cooper prefaces this category by citing Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain and Judi Dench in Chocolat as past winners, thus immediately squelching any appeal this award could possibly have. I'm so glad that Amy Adams' clip includes her priceless split-second impression of a meerkat. I'm less sure about including Michelle Williams saying "Jack Nasty," and I'm extremely unsure why Williams seems to have graduated from the Zellweger Academy of frowny and awkward awards-show expressions. Prediction: Williams; Win: Weisz, happily emerging as the front-runner in this derby, and even more happily freed of that sarcophagus of makeup that encased her at the Globes.

8:27 Must awards-show directors always cut to the Desperate Housewives, even when they're just inanely sitting there? Say, with Eva Longoria sitting on Marcia Cross' lap?

8:32 Fuckin' Shatner. Now I can't even enjoy these interviews with commercial actors without being distracted by how much I've hated the two episodes I've ever seen of Boston Legal, and how appalled I was by his performances in them.

8:36 ACTRESS (TV - COMEDY) Naveen Andrews and Yurtle the Arquette look, sound, and are boring, and so too are these nominations, though I'm impressed with the one-housewife quota. I do, however, love how Huffman's clip, set in a loud barroom, makes it sound like the actual SAG crowd is cheering for her. I love that Allison Janney wants Mary-Louise Parker to win. Prediction: Huffman; Win: Huffman, whose win sure pisses off Ray Romano. Why?? And why didn't Felicity and Marcia figure out they were wearing the same color? Hey, Alfre's in lavender, too! One more question: I love love, love being in love, love other people in love, love it all—so why am I always so put off by the unique kind of bubblehead Felicity Huffman becomes whenever she talks about her husband?

8:43 ACTOR (TV - COMEDY) Prediction: Shatner (&$#%); Win: Sean Hayes???? I guess he's been enormously stretched by his last season of work on W&G. I do think he looks very nice. Love the tie. It's sad when his rhetoric backfires: "To all the actors who thought this actor had an ounce of talent, I thank you." What if they didn't mean that nicely?

8:44 ENSEMBLE CAST (TV - COMEDY) What need has the world of Ellen Pompeo? Prediction: Everybody Loves Raymond; Win: Desperate Housewives, of whom Alfre Woodard is the most gorgeous by a mile. Oh, look, there are some men in this show, too! Who is this kid talking? Is he in the cast? I know we are all presumed to know this, but help me out here.

8:47 Reese Witherspoon has special sensors implanted in the back of her head that alert her whenever a camera, even a distant one with a zoom lens, is on her face.

8:54 SAG president Alan Rosenberg pumps up a room of actors about the awesomeness of actors. But I wonder.... even Rob Schneider? Even Bridget Moynahan? Even Jessica Alba?

8:56 And so, with a whisper of what looks like sequined linen, and with a Shirley Temple doll in her hand, the era of Dakota Fanning as awards-show presenter began. But hey, she's way better at it than Robin Williams. In fact, she does much the best job of anyone we've seen tonight. May I admit, though, that whenever I see clips of old Shirley Temple movies, the only thought I can muster is how glad I am that I wasn't alive then.

9:00 CULTURAL/HISTORICAL INANITY OF THE EVENING The "friendship" between toddler Shirley Temple and Mr. Bojangles, her tap-dancing manservant, three generations older than herself, is held up as a model of racial harmony. I wonder how this played at the Hustle & Flow table. (I would wonder about the Crash table, too, but something makes me ask myself if Paul Haggis even got how strange this is.)

9:03 Jamie Lee Curtis! Always a gift. Always well done-up.

9:04 How come the scripters never reflect that underlining the "natural" and "believable" screen presence of someone like Shirley Temple is rather akin to admitting that she, um, wasn't really acting. I have no doubt that she is a fine and accomplished person in all other departments, including her massive celebrity. But Lifetime Achievement in Acting? Call Gena Rowlands. Call Donald Sutherland.

9:11 Isn't that Jim Gaffigan in the Sierra Mist ad? Perhaps SAG could include a featurette where actors who once headlined their own short-lived sitcoms are now overjoyed to be paying the bills with soda commercials?

9:12 I'll say it again: Catherine Keener looks fabulous. Even better than 40-Year-Old Virgin fabulous. Admittedly, she's not very good at this. And In Cold Blood isn't a novel. And it hurts when we overhear Hoffman saying to Keener, albeit with the best of intentions, "well-done."

9:14 SUPPORTING ACTOR (FILM) Zhang Ziyi looks fantastic, sounds uncomfortable, and experiences yet a new pronunciation of her name over the intercom. Prediction: Dillon; Win: Giamatti. Which, I'm sorry, but the hoopla behind this performance is completely ridiculous. Not bad work, but it shouldn't have any bearing in an awards race. Clooney, Dillon, and Gyllenhaal would all have been better choices, but they all at least have the consolation that they. are. total. foxes.

9:17 Samuel L. Jackson sees dead people. I know I'm going to tear up again at Anne Bancroft. I always did like Barbara Bel Geddes, too. At least half of these people, I've never heard of. Maybe two-thirds. Boy, did I love Teresa Wright, though. And Piglet! And Ruth Hussey! I can't say I loved Shelley Winters, but I'm still sad knowing she's gone.

9:22 Overheard in a commercial: "Ask yourself, is your shampoo designed specially for you?" Um, no. "Designed to give you a special, unique style each and every time?" Still no. Should it be?

9:23 Dammit, is Paul Giamatti really going to get an Oscar nomination for that role? [Still sinking in.]

9:26 The SAG Awards are now padding out their own show with flubbed takes from last year.

9:28 "Please welcome David Stritharin!" Really, it's not that hard a name.

9:29 ACTRESS (TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES) Amy Adams and Benjamin Bratt are both looking sharp in black. Prediction: Woodward; Win: Merkerson, who always gives good speech, so let's hear it! The public shout-out to her divorce lawyers is hilarious.

9:34 ACTOR (TV MOVIE OR MINISERIES) Angela Bassett, gorgeously overdoing it as always, literally stuns William H. Macy into forgetful silence with the sheer muscle of her vOWels and her KoNSoNaNTS! Prediction: Newman; Win: Newman, Hottest Man Alive Emeritus, who is 81 years and 3 days old. Happy birthday, Paul!

9:40 Heath Ledger, drunk, cocks his hand sassily on his left hip. Both men giggle and stutter through their introduction, clearly because the prose they are reading is so purple—though I must say, it might be nice to prevent TV audiences from thinking that the storyline they are narrating is the joke. Again, clearly unintentional, but I can't shake the feeling that they're reading this exactly the same way that two homophobic party boys would.

9:42 ACTRESS (FILM) Pierce Brosnan, as in all the worst student essays, begins with a reference to a dictionary definition. Prediction: Witherspoon; Win: Witherspoon, allowing me a piquant foretaste of how glum I will feel when this happens again in a month. "Sometimes I just can't shake the feeling that I'm just a little girl from Tennessee."

9:47 ACTOR (FILM) Hilary Swank, busy in front and too tanned. "Strathairn," at least, gets its due as a name. Prediction: Ledger; Win: Hoffman, seeming less and less beatable. Behind him as he stands, you can see how excellent Patricia Clarkson looks in buttery yellow. Hoffman gives a gracious speech about actor solidarity, and gets extra points for singling out Clifton Collins, Jr., even though balloting period is already over. Oh, by the way, who stinks at predicting? ME.

9:57 ENSEMBLE (FILM) Morgan Freeman, in a bold spectrum of purples. Prediction: Brokeback Mountain; Win: The Penguins. Just kidding. Crash. A total Brokeback shutout, but still a boring show. And TBS picks exactly the wrong space-hogging font for those of us trying to peer behind the credits in order to see who's hobnobbing. Whatever. I'll be taping over this pronto.

Sending Flowers to Myself...

...on the occasion of the first birthday of this blog. All the pleasures of infancy without any of the teething rings or the ear infections. Though it occurs to me I am still up at odd hours with this thing. Anyway, thanks for continuing to read!

That first day of blogging was occasioned by last year's Golden Globe Awards, most memorable to me now as the occasion when bogus winner Leonardo DiCaprio implored audiences to "keep giving help to the tsunami." Even without a year's distance, I can't say I have much to add about this year's Golden Globes, either. For the third year running, I'm almost totally unmoved by this year's crop of major awards contenders. At least in 2003 I could make a personal obsession and enormous mea culpa out of Charlize Theron's Monster performance, and nearly alone among my friends, I really admired Million Dollar Baby last year. Almost all of this year's front-runners are more palatable to me in concept than in point of fact, to say nothing of straightforward mediocrities like Walk the Line and Match Point. This year's ceremony, which I only observed as a sort of corner-of-my-eye affair on Derek's roommate's tiny TV—featuring the kind of reception that a cheap antenna in Queens is likely to buy you—reminded me of the movies it honored: polished, unembarrassing, but unremarkable beneath a pleasing, gleaming surface.

It is symptomatic of my dyspepsia about this year's awards season that all of my favorite Globes moments came from the TV actors. Two of them came from Geena Davis alone: reminding us what a knockout she often managed to be at these kinds of affairs, especially in bright red, and hooking the whole audience with that hilarious bit of apocrypha in her acceptance speech. It suddenly didn't matter that the two episodes of Commander in Chief I have seen have been so tepid and milky, not least because the writers seem so scared of fully realizing Davis' character and because she hasn't done much to raise the game of her own accord. I loved when Sandra Oh, looking like a million bucks for the second year running, described the nervous rush of the winning instant—"I feel like someone just set me on fire!"—and I loved that S. Epatha Merkerson, virtually alone among repeat Globe- and Emmy-winners (or Globe- and Oscar-winners) managed to give two distinct speeches that were both funny, warm, and sincere: "I am 53 years old, and this was my first lead in a film," she semi-tearfully confessed, before adding, "and if I weren't in the middle of a major hot flash, I would have something to say about that." Merkerson also had, in Jesse L. Martin, the dreamiest date of the evening.

No real fashion praisesongs to deliver, though Eric Bana and Viggo Mortensen sure cleaned up good, and Maria Bello, Felicity Huffman, and Kate Beckinsale stole Uma Thurman's good idea from last year in brilliant white. (Beckinsale's only worked, though, when she ditched the ridiculous fur wrap.)

Oh, Sure, I'll Play Along

I have only realized in recent years that I am not as good at the whole game of Oscar nomination predicting as I used to think I was. I lose my head for which studio is backing what movies, I expect more dark horses and more sharing of the wealth than ever actually transpires, and I project my feelings onto the AMPAS voters, of whom I have very little sense, apart from what's reflected in their past choices. But hey, everyone else is doing it, and it's not like I haven't been thinking about it. My own choices, foolhardy as they doubtless are, about whom I expect to be running in front of the pack for major nom's, who's waiting in the wings to snatch a slot, and who's at least still in the hunt, if only distantly:

BEST PICTURE: Brokeback Mountain; The Constant Gardener; Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck.; Match Point
In the Wings: King Kong; Munich
In the Hunt: Cinderella Man; Syriana; Walk the Line; The New World
Brokeback and GNGL have clear shots. Gardener and Crash strike me as having too many hotly devoted fans to miss out, and I expect Match Point to be a popular cause during balloting season, while I'm banking on Munich to flop about like Amistad, looking for someone to love it, and mostly failing at same.

BEST DIRECTOR: Woody Allen/Match; David Cronenberg/A History of Violence; Peter Jackson/King Kong; Ang Lee/Brokeback; Fernando Meirelles/C.Gardener
In the Wings: George Clooney/GNGL; Steven Spielberg/Munich
In the Hunt: Terrence Malick/The New World; James Mangold/Walk the Line; Ron Howard/C.Man; Paul Haggis/Crash
I know people are calling Clooney a lock, and maybe even a winner, but rather than pull a Redford or a Costner, I think he's more likely to go the route of Rob Reiner in '92 and Ron Howard in '95: the Academy will like his movie, but the directors will hold back. One of the big guns who sailed through the precursors always falls at the end. Meanwhile, Cronenberg looks perfectly situated for the standard auteur giveaway, and Jackson, if he hasn't exhausted the directors with his brand of big spectacle, should get a lot of support from the helmers who wish they were he.

BEST ACTRESS: Joan Allen/The Upside of Anger; Judi Dench/Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity Huffman/TransAmerica; Laura Linney/The Squid and the Whale; Reese Witherspoon/Walk the Line
In the Wings: Naomi Watts/King Kong; Keira Knightley/Pride & Prejudice
In the Hunt: Charlize Theron/North Country; Zhang Ziyi/Memoirs of a Geisha; Maria Bello/AHOV; Vera Farmiga/Down to the Bone
Yes, my Allen fandom is prejudicing me, but SAG could put her right back in the hunt, and if so, I still think she could win, even though Witherspoon is a clear front-runner. Speaking of, how clear is it by now that if Mrs. Harris had gotten any kind of theatrical run, this trophy would have hot-footed its way straight to the Oscar-cursed Annette Bening? I bet that is one mad chick. Meanwhile, to fill out the category, I'm assuming some likeable face will get bumped up from supporting, and Linney is much more endeared to AMPAS than Weisz or Bello.

BEST ACTOR: Ralph Fiennes/C.Gardener; Philip Seymour Hoffman/Capote; Terrence Dashon Howard/Hustle & Flow; Heath Ledger/Brokeback; David Strathairn/GNGL
In the Wings: Jeff Daniels/Squid; Joaquin Phoenix/Walk the Line
In the Hunt: Russell Crowe/C.Man
Hoffman, Ledger, and Strathairn are comfortable, with the former two duking it out for the win. As you can see, I'm expecting a major Gardener surge, and I expect Howard to be first on lots of ballots while Daniels is running behind some of the others. (He and Phoenix both have a much tougher climb ahead than their leading ladies.)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Scarlett Johansson/Match; Shirley MacLaine/In Her Shoes; Emily Mortimer/Match Point; Rachel Weisz/C.Gardener; Michelle Williams/Brokeback
In the Wings: Gong Li/Geisha; Maria Bello/AHOV
In the Hunt: Laura Linney/Squid; Amy Adams/Junebug; Catherine Keener/Capote; Frances McDormand/N.Country
In every acting race, I'm expecting a rebound from someone who missed at the Globes, and since this is Woody Allen's lightning-rod category, and I'm expecting Match Point to be cresting at just the right time, I'm taking a wild bet on Mortimer to join her more famous costar. Weisz and Williams are in popular films, and MacLaine pockets the older crowd. Category questions abound, which could help Gong sneak in.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: George Clooney/Syriana; Clifton Collins Jr./Capote; Matt Dillon/Crash; Paul Giamatti/C.Man; Bob Hoskins/Mrs. Henderson Presents
In the Wings: Jake Gyllenhaal/Brokeback; Oliver Platt/Casanova
In the Hunt: Kevin Costner/Upside; Geoffrey Rush/Munich; Donald Sutherland/P&P; Frank Langella/GNGL; Will Ferrell/The Producers; William Hurt/AHOV
Still the widest spectrum of possibilities, all of their fortunes dependent on the popularity and nomination tallies of their films. I'm looking for Collins to pop up at SAG and make the leap from there.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Cinderella Man; Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck.; Match Point; The Squid and the Whale
In the Wings: Mrs. Henderson Presents; Munich
Three sure things, plus Squid feeling right up the alley of this category, and the two self-serious dramas desperate to be loved duking it out for spot #5—but only because the Munich team has been waffling for months on the question about how closely it's based on the Vengeance book. If it all starts feeling too heavy, Mrs. Henderson could lighten the mood.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Brokeback Mountain; Capote; The Constant Gardener; Munich; Syriana
In the Wings: A History of Violence; Walk the Line
In the Hunt: King Kong; Pride & Prejudice
It's almost creepy how tidily this category stacks up at the moment, which surely means that nomination day will roll around and introduce some totally alien interloper. But for the time being, these sure look like the five.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Brokeback Mountain; Capote; The Constant Gardener; Good Night, and Good Luck.; The New World
In the Wings: The White Countess; Memoirs of a Geisha
In the Hunt: Munich; Jarhead; 2046
The White Countess, despite its low buzz, could finally get Christopher Doyle into the Oscar mix, but with much bigger guns trying to rack up those nomination tallies, it'll have an upward climb. Black & white, no matter how resplendent, tends to have a tough time here, so GNGL is less of a sure thing than it should be. Meanwhile, The New World has its best and perhaps only chance of an award here—and if you ask me, Emmanuel Lubezki has waited quite long enough.

Tallies of Above: Brokeback, C.Gardener: 6; Match Point: 5; Capote, GNGL: 4; Crash: 3; Cinderella Man, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Squid, Syriana: 2

See No Evil, Hear Only Evil

The semi-finalists for the Visual Effects Oscar have just been announced, and there ain't no surprises among these magnificent seven, which will later be pruned down to three official nominees by the sages of the Visual Effects branch:

Batman Begins
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
War of the Worlds

Not only are there no major travesties in this bunch, at least as far as the Visual Effects go, but it actually shapes up to be a pretty gangbusters category no matter how you cut it. I'd drop Narnia most quickly, since it tended toward chintz much too often, but that was as much an effect of the production design and stolid direction as the effects work. Batman and Charlie enervated me a little, but that hobgoblin hood in Batman and the exponentiation of Deep Roy in Charlie were pretty striking stuff. My own ballot would encompass Kong, Star Wars, and War of the Worlds, all of them deserving of the statue (though I'm betting Harry Potter bumps either the Lucas or Spielberg films on Oscar's list).

Meanwhile, as terrifying as King Kong and War of the Worlds often were, they've got nothing on the pure, wretched horror elicited by this list of the 42 finalists for Best Original Song, which manage almost completely to sidestep the Golden Globes' nominees and still look like absolute crap. (Nathaniel, as usual, was onto this press release before I was.) My guesses for the final five are "Dicholo" from The Constant Gardener, "In the Deep" from Crash, "I've Gotta See You Smile" from Because of Winn-Dixie, "There's Nothing Like a Show on Broadway" from The Producers, and Dolly Parton's "Travelin' Thru" from TransAmerica, with outside odds on the cuts from Narnia, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Mad Hot Ballroom, The Upside of Anger, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. But just typing that just made me hurt inside. (If either of the Hustle & Flow tracks gets nommed, especially "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp," I want a notarized contract on someone's desk that says either Céline Dion, James Ingram, and/or Melissa Manchester has to sing it.)

As the Golden Globes Turn

I didn't post earlier today about this morning's Golden Globe nominations because, frankly, I was too frigging cold. The furnace went out in my apartment last night, right around the time it hit 10°F in Hartford. I woke up this morning the spitting image of Rose DeWitt Bukater Dawson, clinging to my little plank, blowing on a whistle, realizing that the only omitted touch that could have made that scene in Titanic any more gruesome would have been a little pile of papers floating next to Rose, waiting to be graded. (It's the end of the semester, honey, and there just aren't enough boats.)

I do care about the Golden Globes, I do. But I disagree with anybody who says that these nominations really establish anything Oscar-wise. No film is ruined that wasn't already in trouble, and some of the "omissions" were predestined: neither Peter Jackson nor Terrence Malick has recently been this group's cuppa. By the same token, precious few people or films should be taking any Academy nods for granted. To make this all a little more specific, especially since it's all. so. important, here's a category rundown. The nominees in the paler font are the ones I haven't seen, though check back in tomorrow, after I've rumbled in the Kong jungle, and again this weekend, when I've at least tested my quavering suspicions about The Family Stone.

BEST PICTURE (DRAMA): Brokeback Mountain; The Constant Gardener; Good Night, and Good Luck.; A History of Violence; Match Point
I didn't expect Munich to be a major nominee, guessing that it would only cop Picture and Director nods, so I admit that I'm a little surprised to see Match Point in its slot (at least, that's the way I read it). I'm not totally ready to hand Brokeback Mountain the Oscar just yet, but like Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility a decade ago, it at least looks to have the Globe all sewn up. (My own vote as of now, before seeing the others: A History of Violence)

BEST PICTURE (MUSICAL/COMEDY): Mrs. Henderson Presents; Pride & Prejudice; The Producers; The Squid and the Whale; Walk the Line
Four inevitabilities—The Producers benefits from the HFPA's total suckerdom for filmed Broadway musicals—but I thought Squid's spot would get gobbled by Wallace & Gromit. I'm delighted to see Squid mentioned, which would narrowly get my vote over the radiant Pride & Prejudice, but I'm suspicious we're going to be asked to stomach a Walk the Line sweep all through this M/C division.

BEST DIRECTOR: Woody Allen; George Clooney; Peter Jackson; Ang Lee; Fernando Meirelles; Steven Spielberg
As you can see, I don't have much room to comment quality-wise, though again, check back tomorrow. Lee is the obvious choice for the win, though the HFPA does love to shake it up in this category, so Woody Allen is a close alternative, and Clooney and Jackson should at least show up in dressy shoes. (Note, too, that you can smuggle a Cronenberg film into the party, but you can't make it too obvious.) Updated: Jackson has it all over Clooney and Meirelles, but I'd still say there's room for others to surpass him in my esteem.

BEST ACTRESS (DRAMA): Maria Bello; Felicity Huffman; Gwyneth Paltrow; Charlize Theron; Zhang Ziyi
Prediction-wise, a two-way race between Huffman and Zhang, who seems like the sort of fashion-plate dumpling that the HFPA favors when they aren't guilted into a Brenda Blethyn. I'm giving Zhang the edge. Meanwhile, I'm hoping Bello didn't just introduce unnecessary category confusion into her campaign, and I hope Paltrow and Theron get to share a table and knock back some Cosmopolitans in the name of all that is blonde. (Gwynnie was good in her movie, and since she seems to be the target of some kind of popular-favor fatwa these days, I admit I'm pleased for her. Still voting for Bello, though.)

BEST ACTOR (DRAMA): Russell Crowe; Philip Seymour Hoffman; Terrence Howard; Heath Ledger; David Strathairn
The year's most crowded acting category, and indeed, this is a formidable list. With the certain-to-win Ledger still waiting on my dance card, I'll take the underdog position and confess my ballot goes to Howard, who raised a whole film on his shoulders with nothing—no mimicked mannerisms, no star cachet—to help him. And it's not just a degree-of-difficulty vote; good as Crowe, Hoffman, and Strathairn were, I think Howard was better...and I'm frankly stunned to see him here. (Fiennes seemed fated.)

BEST ACTRESS (MUSICAL/COMEDY): Judi Dench; Keira Knightley; Laura Linney; Sarah Jessica Parker; Reese Witherspoon
Category make Nick angry. Admittedly, glad Danes is missing. But Where Is Joan Allen??? (cuz that film wasn't no drama). Sacrificing Allen's thistly, funny, sexy, and scary Upside of Anger turn to Sarah Jessica Parker, a stiff wet blanket in the Family Stone trailer, is by far the year's major indignity—especially since you know Parker's only here because she's been such a cutesy ballerina every time she won for Sex and the City. Doesn't matter since Witherspoon's a lock anyway, but that's nearly as dismaying. She's better than I've ever seen her in Walk the Line, but I'll be repeating this from now till March (get used to it, Gabriel): if Reese Witherspoon wins the Best Actress Oscar, it'll be the least impressive performance to do so since Sally Field walked her own dusty road in Places in the Heart.

BEST ACTOR (MUSICAL/COMEDY): Pierce Brosnan; Jeff Daniels; Johnny Depp; Nathan Lane; Cillian Murphy; Joaquin Phoenix
Meanwhile, the worst of this year's acting nominees so far as I have seen is certainly Johnny Depp, who shot a bullet of Too Weird right into the beating heart of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and literally killed it from his first entrance. His opposite is Jeff Daniels, who strides into The Squid and the Whale with perfect, lithe confidence, playing someone with gallons of overconfidence, and even if the movie weren't already so special, Daniels would make it so. Kisses to him, but the trophy, obviously, to Phoenix. (Oh, and I was sure Ledger would double-dutch with a Casanova nod, but apparently, he couldn't even squeeze into an already expanded list.)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Scarlett Johansson; Shirley MacLaine; Frances McDormand; Rachel Weisz; Michelle Williams
Johansson's another one whose performance doesn't do it for me in the trailers; her line reading and coy playing of "No one's ever asked for their money back" carries the distinct Chanel of teenagers playing dress-up. Anyone here could win except for McDormand—MacLaine is least likely after her, but the HFPA has always really liked her. I'd be casting a strong vote for Weisz myself: an actress I used to dread who bravely played against The Constant Gardener's transparent favorite-choosing among its own characters.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: George Clooney; Matt Dillon; Will Ferrell; Paul Giamatti; Bob Hoskins
A perfectly wide open category, every which way. Clooney will win at least something at the ceremony, and maybe it's easiest to honor him here. The Crash-heads are passionate and legion. Ferrell suits HFPA's celebrity appetites. Giamatti is getting a big, undeserved push. Hoskins is heard to be a delight in a Jim Broadbent role, and seems like a Globes type. With no great choices and no bad ones, I'd check Clooney's name for myself and then forget that I did.

BEST SCREENPLAY: Brokeback Mountain; Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck.; Match Point; Munich
The voters are going to have to work in close concert to make sure Allen gets one prize and Clooney gets one, too. The stories behind both victories are just too lickable for the Globes to pass up. I'm guessing it's Allen here, but GNGL won't sign off easily, and none of the others can be written off, either. (Crash would normally suffer for lacking a Picture nod, but given its reputation for Really Saying Something, I wouldn't rule it out. And with only GNGL to compare it to, I'd vote for it.)

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: Kung Fu Hustle (Hong Kong); Merry Christmas (France); Paradise Now (Palestine); The Promise (China); Tsotsi (South Africa)
With Munich and Paradise Now both in contention, I really wish Vanessa Redgrave were going to be around. But I'm betting, based on dust, wisp, and stupid intuition, that the winner comes down to the kinetic Kung Fu Hustle and the purportedly touching and Toronto-stamped Tsotsi.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Brokeback Mountain; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; King Kong; Memoirs of a Geisha; Syriana
Alexandre Desplat is my boy, but the minimalism of his Syriana atmospherics don't really seem like a Globes choice, though it sure outclasses the dull dull dullery of the Narnia tinkling. Brokeback will notch one here on the way toward its morning-after headline tally. Updated: I tend to like James Newton Howard's scores, and I did again here, so I'd call it about a draw quality-wise with Syriana's.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
Okay, you know what? NO. Just no. This category should have been euthanized so long ago. Every year, the HFPA, just like Oscar, has to scrape together some nonsense, but this year is especially tinny. That Alanis Morissette track over the Narnia credits was close to risible, and yet it's nominated. (A little bit ironic—dontcha think?) Mel Brooks did what all the show people do and wrote a new song explicitly to grovel for a trinket. Let's just ignore this category and see if it goes away.

CECIL B. DeMILLE AWARD: Anthony Hopkins
Spool the montage. I want to see him gobble the ground round in Titus, totter around the tablets in Alexander, potter around the greenhouse in Amistad, act with his wig in Instinct, and go crack crazy in Legends of the Fall, and I still want Jodie Foster to call him "inspiring" and "impeccable" in that heavy-lidded, lower-lipped way of hers. If at all possible, I would like this to go on for 39 minutes, with lots of surprise cutaways to see who is drunk.

NYFCC Also Goes for 'Broke'

Upon accepting the Best Actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle in 1970 for her husband, George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst caused a minor scandal by admitting it was the only film prize that Scott thought was worth a damn. Slap-happy as everyone is to win anything these days, you'd be hard-pressed to find a second on that motion, but the NYFCC does tend to pick interesting winners, sparking recognition in recent years for films like Topsy-Turvy, Gosford Park, and Million Dollar Baby and for performers like Marcia Gay Harden, Helen Mirren, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, who had previously been far from the center of the awards radar. Sometimes their choices never do get any traction with other groups, Oscar included, but they deserve plaudits on their own accord. In bold below are this year's winners, just announced today, followed by my favorite selections from recent years in those same categories. (I often find them especially adept at picking Best First Films and Best Supporting Actresses, though curiously, I'm often unmoved by their other acting choices—patterns that all continue this year with the fabulous Bello and Capote and the lucky-duck Witherspoon and Hurt.)

Best Film: Brokeback Mountain (Fargo '96, LA Confidential '97, Topsy-Turvy '99, Mulholland Drive '01, Far from Heaven '02)

Best Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain (Curtis Hanson '97, Terrence Malick '98, Mike Leigh '99, Robert Altman '01, Todd Haynes '02, Clint Eastwood '04)

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line (Jennifer Jason Leigh '95, Emily Watson '96, Hilary Swank '99, Laura Linney '00)

Best Actor: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain (Nicolas Cage '95, Nick Nolte '98, Richard Farnsworth '99)

Best Supp. Actress: Maria Bello, A History of Violence (Courtney Love '96, Lisa Kudrow '98, Catherine Keener '99, Marcia Gay Harden '00, Helen Mirren '01, Patricia Clarkson '02, Shohreh Aghdashloo '03, Virginia Madsen '04)

Best Supp. Actor: William Hurt, A History of Violence (Steve Buscemi '01, Clive Owen '04)

Best First Film: Capote (Babe '95, Big Night '96, Love and Death on Long Island '98, Being John Malkovich '99, George Washington '00, Maria Full of Grace '04)

Best Screenplay: The Squid and the Whale (You Can Count on Me '00, Gosford Park '01, The Secret Lives of Dentists '03)

Best Foreign Film: 2046 (Wild Reeds '95, Ponette '97, In the Mood for Love '01)

Best Nonfiction Film (joint citation): Grizzly Man and The White Diamond (The Gleaners and I '01)

Best Cinematography: 2046 (Breaking the Waves/Dead Man '96, The Thin Red Line '98, The Straight Story '99, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon '00, In the Mood for Love '01, Far from Heaven '02, Elephant/Gerry '03)

Best Animated Film: Howl's Moving Castle (Spirited Away '02)

NBR Says 'Good Night'

NBR stands for Never Best Roster and also for National Board of Review, a "critics' group" whose history of obsequious choices and mysterious practice really hit the fan this year, twice: the group almost disbanded when its own members called its integrity into question, and then their award announcements had to be delayed when it was revealed that some contenders had been left off the ballots. Somewhere between the Hertz of the NYFCC and the Rent-a-Wreck of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (which I refuse to even link to), the NBR putters along, occasionally siding with something interesting (Lupe Ontiveros in Chuck & Buck, Fernanda Montenegro in Central Station, Janet McTeer in Tumbleweeds), but mostly getting flummoxed by their own wheedling desires to spread the wealth and cover all their bases, if not by their own fine-tuned crosshairs on mediocrity (Shine, Quills, and last year's mouldy gumdrop Finding Neverland were all Best Picture winners, and The Last Samurai was a runner-up and a Best Director winner in 2003).

As of now, this year's NBR winners are up on OscarWatch but not on the group's own awards site (small points for the photo of Sean, though). George Clooney's overrated Good Night, and Good Luck. continues NBR's trend of picking as their Best Pictures well-intentioned and interesting movies that, at one level or another, don't quite work. (Gods and Monsters, The Hours, and Mystic River were also honorees; in their past decade of choices, only L.A. Confidential, Moulin Rouge!, and, when I'm feeling generous, American Beauty really made any sense to me.)

The nine runners-up are usually ranked for our enjoyment; they currently aren't on OscarWatch, and whether this is somebody's failing or just a new direction for the NBR is anyone's guess at this moment. That Walk the Line and Memoirs of a Geisha even qualified for the Top 10 is reason to raise an eyebrow. You can see those customary cookie-crumbling tendencies in the way Ang Lee wins Best Director but David Cronenberg gets something called the Billy Wilder Award for Excellence in Direction. Felicity Huffman has gotta be happy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman better start reinforcing those shelves. March of the Penguins is the utterly unadventurous choice for Best Documentary. Nothing is quite as goony-crazy as the award for "Outstanding Dramatic Musical Performance by an Actress" that they cooked up for Björk in 2000, but surely Phil Morrison and Bennett Miller directed better debut films than Julian Fellowes did, and in any event, nothing quite screams that this group has happed upon any newfound capacities for insight, either.

'Brokeback' in Beantown

The Boston Society of Film Critics are probably my favorite of the major critics' groups. They don't have the prestige of the NYFC, they don't influence the Oscar race like the LAFC, and as they were only founded amidst the 1980 Oscar campaigns, they don't have the long history of brave choices that my other favorite, the National Society of Film Critics, can claim. My allegiance to the BSFC is predicated on two things. First, that I basically lost my movie virginity in Boston. I mean, I had kissed movies before, and I'll be married to my childhood sweetheart for my whole life, but as a young thing and a non-driver, I'd never been able to get myself to the movies until I went to college in Boston. My hottest and heaviest relationship in Boston was always with my beloved Kendall Square Cinema, of which there is still a framed picture in my current apartment, six years after my last viewing in that theater (My Son the Fanatic). Still, let's not short-shrift the heavenly Brattle and the marvelously convenient Sony Harvard Square and the delectable Coolidge Corner in Brookline and the cheap but art-friendly second-runs at the Somerville Theatre (in Davis Square, no less!) and the late, lamented, and enormous Sony Chéri, and the multiplex banquet at the Loews Fresh Pond (owned then by Sony) and the eggheaded mind-expansions at the Harvard Film Archive. All these places gave me the life I wanted, and still have, so I'm partial in every which way to the movie culture of that city.

More specifically to the BSFC, I first became aware of them in 1997 when they awarded Best Supporting Actress to Sarah Polley for The Sweet Hereafter, and even more adventurously, their runners-up for Best Actress were Katrin Cartlidge in Career Girls and Tilda Swinton in Female Perversions. That is what I call a critics' group. None of this snovelling around to publicists and trying to read Oscar's crystal ball. They've kept awarding their prizes over the years to unexpected and invigorating choices—Three Kings for Best Picture; Samantha Morton in Under the Skin, Tilda Swinton in The Deep End, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary for Best Actress; Jim Carrey for Man on the Moon and Colin Farrell for Tigerland for Best Actor; Toni Collette for About a Boy and The Hours as Best Supporting Actress (like, actual supporting performances!); Hands on a Hardbody for Best Documentary; The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys for Best First Film; Taste of Cherry for Best Foreign-Language Film. Those are some great calls.

Things have been getting a little more conventional with the BSFC the last few years—last year's Sideways blitz was a yawner, though the Laura Dern/Sharon Warren tie in Supporting Actress was fun. This year, the Brokeback Mountain juggernaut keeps rolling through for Best Picture and Director, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, and Dan Futterman all repeated their LAFC wins for Capote. I'm kind of miffed by the buzzed-about but totally unmagical Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line and Paul Giamatti in Cinderella Man as their Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor choices. Good as they both were, the very suggestion of "greatness" in their work is like a wet washcloth on my brain.

But, the Beantown crowd can still pick a good one: Pride & Prejudice's Joe Wright as the new filmmaker to watch. The fabulous and totally under-attended Murderball as Best Documentary. Kung Fu Hustle, a truly un-Decemberish choice as Best Foreign-Language Film, over the way more Cahiers-certified 2046. When the NYFCC and NBR announce tomorrow, things will either get more or less interesting, but even if I'm alone among all the awards watchers out there, I give it up to Jay Carr and Peter Keough and all those mandarins on the MTA!

And the Trumpets Sounded!

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, often the most Oscar-attuned of the major critics' groups and this year the first one to announce their picks, has crowned Brokeback Mountain their Best Picture of the year, and Ang Lee as their Best Director. David Cronenberg's A History of Violence was the runner-up in both races and scored one nod—oddly, if you ask me—for William Hurt's unimpeachably bold but not entirely persuasive supporting performance.

Capote was a triple winner, though only one prize, for Philip Seymour Hoffman's lead performance, was exclusive to this film. Dan Futterman's screenplay prize was shared with Noah Baumbach for The Squid and the Whale (two impeccable winners there), and Catherine Keener's win as Best Supporting Actress actually cited her entire stable of 2005 turns, which I'd rank in the following order, quality-wise: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (wonderful), Capote (really good), The Interpreter (perfectly sufficient), and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (um, no).

Best Cinematography went to Robert Elswit for Good Night, and Good Luck. and Production Design to 2046; each of those films was the runner-up in the opposite category. Animated Film went to Wallace and Gromit..., while the animated Howl's Moving Castle won for its Score, which I don't remember even slightly. Best Documentary went to my beloved Grizzly Man, Foreign-Language Film to Michael Haneke's post-colonial surveillance thriller Caché, and the New Generation Award to Terrence Howard, whom I still refer to as Terrence Dashon Howard, for Hustle & Flow and Crash. (Apparently, the LAFCA weren't paying attention in Glitter and Angel Eyes, like I was.)

I'm saving my favorite category, Best Actress, where the LAFCA endorsed a real dark horse, Vera Farmiga (pictured), for playing a drug-addicted housewife in Debra Granik's Down to the Bone. Both the performance and the film were Sundance victors, but the Academy-baiting theatrical run at the end of November was distressingly brief in NYC and LA, so Farmiga had better hope someone is sending screeners around Hollywood. Her selection by this group recalls their joint endorsement in 1998 of Fernanda Montenegro in Central Station, a Brazilian superstar unknown on these shores who actually did score a come-from-behind Oscar nod in a year as weak as this one. Montenegro tied, though, with Ally Sheedy in High Art, who was unjustifiably missing from Oscar's list. I'm betting that Farmiga goes the way of Sheedy rather than Montenegro, but the LAFCA's early laurel could really help.

Who this all really hurts is Joan Allen, and by extension, me. Allen, historically a favorite of this group, had her best chances of a big critical boost here, or else at the National Board of Review. It is crucial that Allen get a critics' prize, so that she can more likely be Oscar nominated, so that she can be a surprise winner, so that she can prove me right in my rather sanguine insistences throughout the fall that she is a front-runner. This dame needs an Oscar! (Alas, she wasn't even LAFCA's runner-up; Judi Dench was.)

Correction: Down to the Bone is still playing at the Quad Cinema on 13th St. in NYC, which gave Being Julia such a good long run last year, and at the Laemmle Fairfax in Los Angeles. Seek it out, people. Maybe it's time for me to get moving for a day.