Best of 2007: Adventures in Nonfiction

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

Best of 2007: Ensemble

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

No Country for Women. There Will Not Be Women. Except, Thankfully, These Women

As great as the Supporting Actor field was this year, one couldn't help feeling that the almost exclusively male ensemble has become the new Hollywood vogue. Women had to fight more than usual to be in the movies, much less to be great in them, which is part of why the pool of contestants was so much smaller in this field than in others. But that's not a slam on my five anointees, none of whom are "Hamburger Helper options, filling out the category" in the immortal vernacular of Holly Hunter (in relation to a year when she herself was nominated). Here are a chameleon, a testy friend, a wannabe mom, a mom with a secret or two, and a corporate neurotic to treasure.

Best of 2007: Supporting Actor

Did anybody, besides John McCain, have a good day yesterday? Lots of winter doldrums and midterm grumpiness in my neck of the woods, which is part of why this tantalizing glimpse of spring did my spirit so much good, and why I also seized the chance, at the price of staying up later than I wanted to, of relishing these five performances. Even running through all the runners-up, any of whom would have been proud additions to my final five, reminded me of how much inspired thesping was made available on movie screens in 2007; for even more evidence, notice how much trouble Mainly Movies had leaving off these honorable mentions when he whittled down his own performance hall of fame for the year. Two of his finalists are two of my runners-up, and one of my other runners-up gets a P.S. mention in Tim's rundown, though he thinks this fellow is a lead (and I can see why that might be right). Also, I only have one of Oscar's anointed five as a near-miss from my own list, and Tim has none. So, three rosters totaling about 30 performances, with only four overlaps? How delicious to have so much excellence from which to choose.

Aural Stimulation

Five salutes to the movies that sounded best to me in 2007—and again, aside from No Country for Old Men, none of the other four films were greeted by the crowds of bad-taste aficionados, New Wave enthusiasts, arthouse thrill-seekers, or crime-genre devotees that they respectively deserved. Queue 'em up, if you missed 'em in theaters, and if you didn't, queue 'em up again and take a good listen. (For my own part, to break a bad but longstanding habit of Nick's Flick Picks, I'm including the names of the sound designers, mixers, and effects supervisors. I've ignored them for a long time while I learned the differences among these job titles, and because learning four or even two names seemed so much more cumbersome than learning who Roger Deakins or Sandy Powell was. Embarrassing, but true. In any event, this website now officially and fully enters the Sound Era, a mere 80 years after it began.)

Best of 2007: Original Screenplay

It's impossible to follow a commemorative post, written in the aftermath of such a premature and uncanny death, and not feel complicit in some enormous cultural process of turning around and moving on. But, with final respects to those who actually knew Heath Ledger, and with due acknowledgment that my onlooker's sorrow isn't anything like their intimate grief, I of course am moving on: moving on, at least, to keep celebrating the same art form that he sustained and celebrated, which is, after all, the root and reason for the unexpectedly emotional claim that yesterday's news had on me, and on so many of us.

So: I don't agree with the perennial axiom that a great movie starts with a great script. Not all great movies have great scripts; most scripts are rewritten and retro-fitted during filming; it's impossible for a filmgoer to parse the screenwriter's labor from spontaneous improvisation, or from the re-architecture of editing, or the other happy accidents of filming. I'm more likely to love a movie for its cinematography or its editing than for its script—but I do, of course, still thrill to the artistry of a great screenplay. And from the best of what I can tell, even in relation to one nominee that doesn't even have a credited script, the arc, the words, the sequencing, and the structure of these five films fully warrant our warmest admiration.

In Tribute to the Striking Writers...

You thought I was kidding about that all-night party/vigil on the eve of the Oscar nominations, didn't you? Actually, I'm just up late with piles of work, but while I'm sitting here, I thought I'd swipe this last moment before the hurricane of post-nominations debate to salute some of the writers and to remind myself (and hopefully some others) of why the writers, especially at the peak of their powers, deserve the money and the recognition that they're seeking. Check 'em out...

Another Category, Another Buddy

I couldn't help it: having shouted out Tim and Nathaniel in the categories I drafted last night, I couldn't have the world thinking that I had forgotten ModFab, who'd also have a Willy Wonka golden ticket to the stay-up-all-night sleepover I wish I could throw on the night before the nominations. ModFab's theater productions are always such arresting sights to behold, and he's always so attuned to production design in his film reviews, that the Art Direction category always makes me think of him. So, there went my lunch hour, but here you go. Tough choices this year, and a lot of swapping in and out right until the end, but I think I'm at peace with these as my final five.

By the way, as we've now hit the one-third mark of these Honorees, with 7 out of 21 categories announced, the multiple nominees thus far are Lust, Caution and There Will Be Blood with three apiece (and at least one honorable mention in each case), and The Aerial, Grindhouse (a four-time honorable mention, which means it's been in striking distance for every category except Costume Design), and Lady Chatterley. Since I'd argue that none of these movies, save There Will Be Blood, got anywhere close to their due while they were in theaters, I hope that somehow, somewhere, somebody's Netflix queue is newly a-churning.

The Great Work Continues...

Here are two more categories in my Best of 2007 feature that I here deliver as targeted treats to two of my favorite Oscar buddies: Tim, who actually remembers extended melodies and motifs from a film's score on the way out of the theater (which I have managed to do about five times in my life), and Nathaniel, who loves costume designers so much that they get their own shrine on The Film Experience, and their own page in his Oscar nomination predictions. Enjoy these picks, guys—I think you'll be sympathetic to both groups of choices, based on your own picks—and enjoy them, too, everyone else! (I really enjoy hearing from some of you lurkers in response to these announcements...) (And yes, "enjoy" is apparently the word of the day...)

The Great Work Has Begun!

As embarrassing as it is that I never completed the last lap on last year's Honorees, such that I never actually announced my Best Picture lineup (though my top ten list was a really good tipoff), it's already well past time to start announcing my Best of the Year selections and write-ups for 2007. I finally saw Persepolis this weekend, which was the last title I was waiting for before finalizing my lists in most of my categories. I still haven't sealed the deal on a few DVDs and dubious-looking holiday releases, but after 140 theatrical releases, enough is enough. Let's agree that Golden Door is probably exquisite-looking, even on disc, and that The Golden Compass was probably frightful anyway, and move on with our lives.

So, without further ado, and while you're still smacking your lips over the first major phase of the Film Bitch Awards and saving room on your plate for Tuesday morning's announcement of the Oscar nominations, here are four palette-cleansing courses for the parallel feast of my own Best of Year feature. Click here (or on any of the graphics in this post) for my favorites in the categories of Song Score, Sound Effects, Visual Effects, and Makeup. And PLEASE don't be shy: if I'm going to finish all of this, I'd love to feel that people are actually reading!

Live-Blogging the "Golden Globes"

Quotes used very advisedly. I don't think anyone really knows what to expect from this year's "press conference" from the HFPA, though I have heard disturbing rumors about the involvement of Ryan Seacrest. Is that true?? When I say that I am geared for the worst, what you should hear is: I can reach the bottle of Scotch from where I am sitting.

Let me say right out front, even as an awards junkie, that I am totally fine with the cancellation of this year's show. Though I realize lots of other wage-earning caterers and valets and designers and Who Knows What Else have been severely impacted by the axing of the telecast, I am fully sympathetic to the fact that the Writers Guild won't be taken seriously if the collateral damage of the strike isn't serious, and the demise of the Globes ceremony sure seems to have upped the ante on public perceptions of the WGA's conviction.

I know lots of people feel that this cancels a major, annual showcase for what the WGA does—enabling good feature films and TV series, by writing good scripts that deserve recognition. Still, as sad as I am to miss the chance to see what Tilda Swinton wears to a shindig like this (she arrived in '01, as a nominee for The Deep End, looking like a cross between Susan Sarandon in The Hunger and David Bowie, also in The Hunger), I say PAY ALL THE WRITERS, and THEN worry about recognizing the best of them with trophies.

This sentiment, by the way, has been brought to you by a website that has never negotiated a labor dispute or analyzed a Hollywood balance sheet; I hope you are duly reverent of my credentials for passing judgment.

But some things, I do know (a little bit) about. Like who deserves to win these Globes. And what the victories and losses might mean for Oscar chances. And when I am watching a dunderheaded, glued-together NBC telecast staffed entirely by people who know just as little about what makes a movie truly good as I know about guild negotiations... which is exactly what I expect to be doing as of 8pm CST. And since I haven't live-blogged anything for a while, and since I haven't commented at all about the Globes nominations since the day they were announced, I thought I'd work a real-time situation. Is anybody listening? Comment away...

7:30pm Well, check this sh*t out! NBC is already pimping pumping up the Globes telecast by talking to some of the nominees. And here's Nikki Blonsky, of Hairspray. It's hard not to feel bad for actors like Blonsky, whom it's hard to imagine ever being nominated for a Golden Globe ever again (or, for that matter, an Oscar, even this year). But then: I just saw Martha Stewart put a diamond collar on Blonsky's dog. Which maybe wouldn't sit well with me if I had written Hairspray (shout-out to Leslie Dixon!) and I wasn't getting paid any DVD residuals, while Nikki's dog Rocky is rocking the ice. Or maybe those were rhinestones? Either way. As Lady Macbeth said, Un-jewel that dog.

Though it is quite fetching to watch home-video footage of The Blonskys reacting to their daughter/sister's underdog nomination. Rocky's reaction is unrecorded, but Nikki upended her own coffee table. I'm happy for her. She's great in the movie.

7:38pm Here's Ellen Page, a dynamo in Juno. Deserving of all the acclaim, which I personally wasn't ready to say after Hard Candy. (Hey, NBC just said "dynamo," too! Do I have a blurb-whore career that I'm not even exploiting?) Not loving the Ellen Page makeup, but I love the talent. And I love that she's already smarter than the woman interviewing her ("Pregnancy... for many adults, their worst nightmare!") ("Juno isn't just entertaining, it's also [pause] thought-provoking.") I'm watching this interviewer fall asleep. But it's worse when she wakes up, because she starts comparing Ellen Page to Audrey Hepburn. Which Ellen Page is smart enough to call an insane comment.

7:51pm "Sally Field... turned those nautical winds [of Gidget] into headwinds, as her career took off!" Matt Lauer is a wordsmith. Oh, I forgot: the actual writers are on strike.

7:54pm Whereas Sally Field just deconstructed the word "g*ddamn." She's pretty articulate, without trying to prove how dirty and cool and un-Gidget she is, like she did way back when on Inside the Actor's Studio. Oh, and here we go. I guess we had to go over the whole "You like me" thing. Leave Sally alone! How tired must she be of this question? Maybe I just get cranky because it reminds me that Sally Field won an Oscar for Places in the G*ddamn Heart.

8:01pm Here we go!

8:01:05pm Tom Hanks already has four Golden Globes?? I'm already depressed.

8:02pm Replaying last year's opening montage. Shock cut to: empty pavement where a Red Carpet should be! And worse: Billy Bush! And Nancy O'Dell!!! GGGGAH!!! Wouldn't you rather look at bare pavement?

8:04pm BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MOVIE
Will Win: Cate Blanchett, for I'm Not There, and for being a big star giving an impish, alive performance that still fits the heady style of the piece
Should Win: Tilda Swinton, for Michael Clayton, for redeeming a shit role into a barely equalled portrait of female masquerade, corporate terror, and moral crisis that's starting to recognize itself as such. Watching Swinton is like reading a good thriller, going to an acting class, and reading Joan Rivière all at the same time.
Actual Winner: Cate Blanchett. I'm officially on a roll!

8:04pm BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A TV ANYTHING The winner is Jeremy Piven for Entourage.

8:06pm BEST ACTRESS IN A TV DRAMA Anyone who just heard Patricia Arquette scream "Ten minutes!" should know why she shouldn't win. Ooh, Glenn Close is fierce! Holly Hunter is acting in an actual wind-tunnel. Winner: Glenn Close.

8:10pm BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A TV ANYTHING I love Rachel Griffiths. She's so funny and smart. I don't get Katherine Heigl. Samantha Morton is looking great and spooky in Longford. Winner: Samantha! OK, I'm officially sad to miss a speech. And an outfit. This girl has come to the Oscars in a T-shirt AND in some kind of armor-plated situation. We all lost just then. Except Samantha.

8:12pm BUT WAIT! That all happened so fast that I didn't even have a chance to EVOKE the HORROR of listening to BILLY BUSH and NANCY O'DELL discuss their feelings about each winner. Billy thinks Amy Ryan shouldn't have lost: "A 20-year career, a storied actress, two Tony nominations... whereas Cate Blanchett? At the end of the day, it's a woman playing a man." He also called Damages a "great movie." I can't even deal with tactlessness of the presenters of awards discussing whether the winners represent good or bad news. But I can say: BILLY BUSH DOESN'T KNOW A SINGLE THING ABOUT ANYTHING.

8:14pm BEST ACTOR IN A TV DRAMA This thing moves frigging fast! Jon Hamm in Mad Men. What is Mad Men? Nancy O'Dell is surprised. Billy Bush: "Imagine a man named Hamm being an actor!" Again: STRIKING WRITERS.

8:17pm BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Ratatouille. But they couldn't help showing the Access: Hollywood punchline from The Simpsons Movie. Billy Bush, by the way, has seen Ratatouille several times with his kids. Don't you wish all presenters said these things?

8:19pm BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL/COMEDY
Will Win: Marion Cotillard, though she'll get a tough race out of Ellen Page
Should Win: I admit I'm biased toward Cotillard, because on two visits, her performance still impresses the hell out of me, not just technically but emotionally; those gestures aren't just imitative, they're enormously expressive, and complicatedly so
[Clips advertise how bad Patrick Dempsey is in Enchanted, and how bad Helena Bonham Carter is at singing. Double ouch.]
Actual Winner: MARION!! Yay. Billy: "You know, this was a tough one! And I need a haircut!" Nancy is pulling for Ellen Page.

8:21pm I have just realized how crucial writers are to live-blogging. Without all that inane patter padding out the shows, there's no time for my own craptastic would-be wit.

8:22pm An ad for that Ryan Reynolds movie. "For Will Hayes, love has been a catastrophe..." For me personally, Ryan Reynolds has been a catastrophe.

8:26pm BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MOVIE
Will Win: Javier Bardem, for turning himself into such an implacable force in No Country for Old Men
Should Win: Kinda nobody, because my favorite performance is Casey Affleck's in ...Jesse James, but it's so obviously the lead
[No clips, even though the ladies got 'em]
Actual Winner: Javier Bardem... who Nancy O'Dell claims used to be a stripper?? Among MANY OTHER QUESTIONS I just generated from this news... do you think he knows Diablo Cody?

8:27pm Billy Bush is proud of the Coen Brothers for grossing $45 million for a movie "even though they're so boutique." Dave Karger reassures us that even if we don't know who Marion Cotillard is, she is beautiful. Imagine, for a moment, beautiful Marion.

8:28pm BEST ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE/MINISERIES Queen Latifah. But Nancy's mad that Debra Messing lost. Again, tact is ruling the day. Queen Latifah might be the nicest person alive, but wouldn't you love to see her pop Nancy?

8:29pm I AM ALREADY EXHAUSTED! I AM ALREADY STRESSED OUT! Telecasts shouldn't be like this. It's even worse because of the musical background: NBC keeps underlining everything with the sound of industrial mills grinding each other to bits.

8:33pm BEST ACTOR IN A TV COMEDY I haven't seen any of these shows except The Office, but I find myself rooting for Alec Baldwin. And against David Duchovny, because why would any show call itself Californication? Then again, I do have a soft spot for Lee Pace, because of Soldier's Girl. It'll prolly be Lee. Winner: David Duchovny? It doesn't count when I get one wrong if it's TV, cuz I don't even try to know.

8:35pm Billy Bush on Californication: "I wouldn't say it's a comedy? It's just... cool."

8:35pm BEST TV COMEDY Extras. Nothing to say, y'all. I'm flagging. Keep me alive! Pass me an orange slice!

8:37pm BEST ACTRESS IN A TV COMEDY Samantha Who? is exactly how I feel about Samantha Who?, even though I think Christina Applegate is a pretty genius comedienne. And I do have a crush on Tina Fey, even if that clip didn't totally work out for me. Anna Friel! I remember when she was going to be "it" in 1999, and then nothing happened. Yes, I just learned that she is on Pushing Daisies. Mary-Louise Parker sounds way less nasal than usual. Winner: Tina Fey, yay yay yay, especially because she's a big ol' picketing Guild supporter.

8:39pm Dave Karger: "Duchovny is the only guy who showed his butt in the show. I think that gave him the edge." Do I love this comment, because DK gets how stupid this all is? Or do I hate this comment, because it's part of how stupid this all is? And surely this won't mean that Tom Hanks has any chance to win. (If you haven't seen Charlie Wilson's War, do the math, and steel yourself.)

8:42pm Celebrity Apprentice: it's what's on in hell.

8:43pm BEST DIRECTOR
Will Win: The Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men, and good on 'em, at least since they've never been to this podium before
Should Win: I'm about equally split on the Coens and Julian Schnabel, since they all leant considerable craft and stylistic panache to stories that were much less resonant than they might have been, with even wiser, deeper direction
Actual Winner: Julian Schnabel! No sh*t! That Oscar slot is looking guar-ohn-teed. Billy Bush doesn't even have a dumb comment to share here.

I did just remember that no telecast means no 3-hour tribute to Steven Spielberg. That warmed my heart a little.

8:45pm BEST ACTOR IN A MUSICAL/COMEDY
Will Win: Johnny Depp, for being everybody's favorite actor
Should Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, for gorgeously underplaying and generously, tenderly sharing The Savages
Actual Winner: Johnny Depp. "Johnny's the man. He invented his character on Pirates of the Caribbean." I'm'a let you figure out who said that.

8:47pm BEST PICTURE (MUSICAL/COMEDY)
Will Win: Juno, I'm going to guess, though I know the HFPA does love their musicals
Should Win: I'm firmly in the Juno camp: smart and genuinely revelatory, since it doesn't wind up where it starts, and it goes where few movies go, and it's funny, and gorgeously acted
[Don't you just feel better every time you see a clip of Hairspray? And worse every time you see a clip of Across the Universe?]
Actual Winner: Sweeney Todd. Yeah, I felt nervous about that one.

8:49pm Nancy O'Dell: "The big one, Best Picture (Drama), coming up next!" They also said that 8:11. Also, by the way, it would seem that the telecast will not be including the Foreign Film or Score or Song or Screenplay awards. Or do you think they're going to pack seven categories into the last nine minutes? And to leave out the Screenplay category?? I WONDER WHY THEY DID THAT.

8:51pm Beyoncé: "I'm not infallible, but my lip color is." Nope, it's really the other way around.

8:52pm For the record, I'm guessing that the Juno script, the score from Atonement, the song from "Into the Wild," and Diving Bell were going to win those untelevised awards.

8:54pm BEST TV DRAMA Can someone tell me whether I really need to rent Big Love or Damages? And whether the last really is more than reviving "Look What a Bitch She Is!" misogyny? Cuz the clips always scare me a little. GGAH!! Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Definitely one of my enemies. Winner: Mad Men. The Globes are flicking off the networks.

8:55pm BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA
Will Win: Julie Christie, who may as well clear up three spots on her mantel now: Globe, SAG, Oscar
Should Win: Angelina Jolie. Call me crazy, but she has an even tougher, subtler, more deceptively intricate job in A Mighty Heart. And look, here's a clip of her in a pool, in a see-through dress. How impressive, NBC.
[Keira Knightley is just so... blah in Atonement. Even in 10-second bits.]
Actual Winner: Julie Christie. Stifle your astonishment.

8:57pm BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA
Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis is probably untouchable
Should Win: And he probably should be, at least in this field. (Hint: I thought at least one actor was better in '07!) Viggo and George will have to console each other. I would love to be there for that.
[Way to go, clip-choosers, for seizing on George's best scene and Daniel's best scene. Even if you then opted for one of James McAvoy's worst. I guess you can't win 'em all. Viggo's performance hasn't aged as well as I thought it would with me, unfortunately. And Denzel's never even got started with me.]
Actual Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis. And here's Billy Bush's trenchant response: "He is an actor's actor!" I wonder what Billy thinks he is? Surely not a journalist's journalist? Or a stooge's stooge? Who is Billy's constituent base?

8:59pm BEST PICTURE (DRAMA)
Will Win: No Country for Old Men, if the HFPA doesn't go all pro-gewgaw and pick Atonement
Should Win: There Will Be Blood. Not a perfect movie, but by far the most ambitious of these seven, and by far the most willing to put every facet of filmmaking craft in the service of its story and its vision.
Actual Winner: The Great Debaters! Just kidding. Atonement.

9:01pm GGGGAH!!! American Gladiators! Shutting the TV off, and clicking over to IMDb to learn that No Country got Screenplay, "Guaranteed" from Into the Wild got Song, Atonement got Score, and Diving Bell got Foreign-Language Film. So: I screwed up on Best Picture (Drama), Best Picture (Musical/Comedy), Best Director, and Best Screenplay, but I got everything else right on the movie side. Another way to say that: I goofed on the four awards that you would most want to win if you were a movie, but I represented elsewhere.

Best Dressed: George Clooney. Seriously, PROVE ME WRONG.

Thanks for reading, and for leaving so many comments. I'm eager to go read them!

Bests of the Bests

With about a week to go before I can start posting my own awards—y'all know I'm out here working without critics' previews or screener DVDs to help me out—I thought I'd direct your attention to some of my favorite year-end stuff happening around the web. If you've got an hour or two, Radio Allegro out of British Columbia hosted a year-end wrap-up radio show with me, Modern Fabulousity, Queering the Apparatus, and the Allegrist himself, Ashley Foot. Tune in to hear about flops that should have been hits; left-field For Your Consideration ads; our thoughts on movie trends related to aging, pregnancy, gender, the Western, and the musical; and for QTA's imperious, uproarious riff on the sexual politics of Knocked Up (which we all laughed at before admitting that we liked the movie). Yours truly is a bit horrified to realize how loooooong I go on when someone asks me a question, especially compared to my gorgeously succinct conversation partners, but I think it's a great conversation.

I also urge you to read QTA's own Year in Review; ModFab has a great one, too, but he also whipped up a parallel list of the year's best films and performances by soliciting opinions from six of his pals (including filmmaker Q. Allan Brocka and GreenCine impresario David Hudson) and tallying them up. Look who won the acting derby! The heart melts.

Our discerning and beautifully incisive pal Mainly Movies also puts an unexpected twist on the year-end format: he is counting down the 10 best and 10 worst movies at the same time, so that (for starters) the observational sensitivity of Funny Ha Ha arrives in a package deal with the lurid grotesquerie of Hannibal Rising. Continuing the theme of the articulate and the unexpected, Nic Rapold's Top Ten List in the New York Sun is a great read, topped by the sensational and ridiculously underseen Day Night Day Night.

Doug Cummings and Rob Christopher both fill us in on their favorite new releases of 2007 as well as their favorite back-catalogue titles that they saw for the first time in the last twelve months. I still don't see what Rob does in Stuck, but I appreciate the eclecticism of his list.

Lastly, as you are all no doubt aware, the 8th annual Film Bitch Awards will be in full swing any moment now, but the preview attractions—a list of the year's most overrated darlings and an indictment of the year's worst movies and performances—already constitute a full-course meal. No sacred cows here; you know it hurt Nathaniel to say some of these things, but it probably hurt him more to watch them. Stay tuned for more, there as well as here.

And now, I take my leave to keep pondering that milkshake with the long, long straw.

The Leading Ladies of 2007

Happy '08! I hope everyone had a great New Year's Day, my favorite day in the entire year to play it cool, keep things close to home, hang out on the futon and on the phone—and hence, no blogging yesterday. But, there will be copious entries soon enough, with end-of-year best lists to compile, and a major birthday to celebrate. (And no, I'm not talking about Todd's 47th today, though I should be — bon anniversaire, mon cher!)

Moviewise, I've got two heavy hitters blowing into the Windy City this weekend—critical darling There Will Be Blood and well-reviewed documentary The Price of Sugar, an Oscar semifinalist. Basically, I'm waiting on these titles and Persepolis (opening on Jan. 11), plus some last-minute rentals like Offside and The Namesake, before my theatrical survey of 2007 will be complete enough to draft my annual Honorees. Errant 11th-hour releases like The Great Debaters, The Kite Runner, and the is-it-out-or-not? Grace Is Gone also have outside shots in at least one category, but they're a tad less pressing.

So what does every movie on my Still To Be Seen itinerary have in common? Not a single one of them has a female lead... well, give or take Hilary Swank in P.S. I Love You and little Dakota Blue Richards in The Golden Compass, neither of whom looks remotely prepossessing in the trailers, and I'll probably pass on both movies anyway. All of which makes Best Actress (and isn't this fortuitous?) the one category for which I can already posit a semifinalist list. And what a list it is! Anybody here would have qualified for my final five in '01, '03, or '05, and given how many of them are solid Oscar hopefuls, I'm expecting an Academy shortlist that trounces last year's admirable derby of Cruz, Dench, Mirren, Streep, and Winslet. Here are the fourteen glorious contenders:

JULIETTE BINOCHE in Flight of the Red Balloon
NIKKI BLONSKY in Hairspray
JULIE CHRISTIE in Away from Her
MARION COTILLARD in La Vie en rose
KATE DICKIE in Red Road
CATHERINE FROT in The Page Turner
ANGELINA JOLIE in A Mighty Heart
LAURA LINNEY in Jindabyne
LAURA LINNEY in The Savages
ANAMARIA MARINCA in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
ELLEN PAGE in Juno
PARKER POSEY in Broken English
PARKER POSEY in Fay Grim
TANG WEI in Lust, Caution

If that list isn't stupendous enough, consider that I've already elected against work as strong as Nina Hoss' in Yella, Amy Adams' in Enchanted, Marina Hands' in Lady Chatterley, Ashley Judd's in Bug, Luisa Williams' in Day Night Day Night, Julie Delpy's in 2 Days in Paris, Christina Ricci's in Black Snake Moan, Mirjana Karanović's in Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, and Amber Tamblyn and Tilda Swinton's muted but interesting pas-de-deux in Stephanie Daley.

Other people would have advocated for Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding, but I just didn't find much modulation or depth in her admirably sour exterior; or Keira Knightley in Atonement, but her vocal work drove me batty and she didn't find a way into the character that I felt or believed, though the script is certainly not her friend in pursuing that venture; or Isabelle Huppert in Private Property, refreshingly casual and direct as a discontented mother but abandoned by the script before she's broached any deeper territory; or Jodie Foster in The Brave One, nailing Erica's tough carapace but pretending to be in a smarter movie than she's in (plus she takes that unsalvageable ending even further over the top than it's already going); or Halle Berry in Things We Lost in the Fire, who mostly shows how much better she'd be in Monster's Ball now than she was six years ago, with an artfully restrained and shaded but still rather limited performance; or the much-beloved Carice van Houten in Black Book, but I found her to be more of a pose-striker and an agreeable, flexible participant in Verhoeven's flamboyant mise-en-scène than a particularly whipsmart or engaging performer. (She also, for all of her virtues, made Ellis/Rachel a bit of a wash as a spy: how many sidelong fretful glances and nervous fingers and anxious over-the-shoulder looks is a disguised Jewish spy at war with the Nazis really supposed to allow herself? Tang Wei knew better than this little minx.)

The above were at least runners-up. Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, Vittoria Mezzogiorna in Love in the Time of Cholera, Markéta Irglová in Once, and Belén Rueda in The Orphanage never excited me all that much. Cate Blanchett was almost as bored as I was during Elizabeth: Full Throttle. Don't even get me started on Helena Bonham Carter, as blank and superficial in her acting of Sweeney Todd as she is patently deficient in her singing; or Molly Shannon in Year of the Dog, disappointingly inadequate to her movie's difficult tone and to all of her close-ups; or Keri Russell, exuding the same lockstep mediocrity and lack of real ideas or feelings as is the rest of Waitress; or Asia Argento, who won lots of fans at Cannes but broods her way through The Last Mistress in a series of increasingly dull grimaces and off-putting bits of naughty-bobcat improvs; or Marianne Faithfull in Irina Palm, well-buzzed on the festival circuit but pitifully stiff and inert in an underconceived part.

So, with all of that said: my list of 14 semi-champions will be whittled down to five later this week, as we kick off the 2007 Nick's Flick Picks Honorees. In truth, four of them are already locked for inclusion, four are confirmed also-rans, and the other six are competing for that fifth spot on the final list... so go ahead and state your cases for your favorites! Plus, we've got 19 other categories to sort through, and even more to say about actresses of the past as well as the present. But you'll have to stay tuned for those tidbits. Enjoy '08, vote Democratic, and keep coming back!

Merry Xmas, and Stop Smiling!

Not as contradictory as it sounds. I do wish you a Merry Christmas, gleefully, sincerely, quickly, and somewhat exhaustedly, after all the baking I did last night and all the essay-writing (seriously!) I'm having to do this morning, in advance of my annual professional party. (At least writing this paper has involved sustained attention to two delicious movies.)

Speaking of delicious movies, and in the spirit of gift-giving, the best cinematic stocking-stuffer of the year is absolutely the elegant and richly outfitted Charles Burnett Collection from Milestone Video, centered around the seminal and at-long-last-available Killer of Sheep. As you probably know, after 30 years in a limbo of non-exhibition, the 30-year-old Killer finally bowed on commercial screens in the late spring. I was wowed by the movie in August, when it arrived to Chicago's Music Box Theatre and have been even more deeply wowed after two further revisits. After some hemming and hawing, I have elected not to include the movie in my upcoming Top Ten List and year-end awards, since I experienced all those #1 spots for Army of Shadows last year to be something of a cop-out. But, still pending There Will Be Blood, Persepolis and eight other (read: less auspicious) theatrical releases, Killer of Sheep does look to me like the movie of the year. My ongoing friendly relations with Stop Smiling Magazine allowed me to publish this online review, which I hope you'll enjoy...on or after today's joyeux noël. More from me before year's end!

Away from Them

I can't believe I'm away from home and from e-mail when all the critics' awards are pouring in. Y'all do not need me to summarize who won what in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, or what the National Board of Review had to say; Nathaniel and Gabriel have got that covered. So, taking a hint from my blog buddy Six Things, and acknowledging that I am currently poaching a wireless connection from a nearby business, I'll limit my reactions to the following:

1. Casey Affleck is a lead in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I thought he was good in the movie, if not quite great, but I'm not giving him any love for his NBR or San Fran wins as Best Supporting Actor, because The S**t Is Bananas.

1a. People: any movie can have two leads. Or more: think Closer. Or none: think I'm Not There. Critics: don't think like Oscar publicists, think like actors: if you landed Clive Owen's part in Closer or Casey Affleck's part in Assassination, you'd call home to Ma and say, "I got one of the lead roles!" Not, "I'm in this movie where I support Brad Pitt by being in the movie even more than he is, and having the whole final act to myself!" So, that's just a little bit about where I'm coming from. Anyway.

2. Speaking of Casey Affleck, he's an even less ambiguous lead in Gone Baby Gone, in which Amy Ryan gives a sporadically striking but very loud performance, and often emblematizes the movie's coarse attempts to "get at" a sub-working-class, drug-laced, South Boston world that the filmmakers don't know enough about. (They know Boston, fine, but not this Boston.) How she is turning into the Helen Mirren of 2007 and winning every prize in sight is beyond me.

2a. People: TILDA. SWINTON. Which part of this is confusing? Help us, National Society of Film Critics. You're our only hope.

3. The Broadcast Film Critics Association. This organization and its awards are best handled in the same way you would handle a horsefly: just stand still and ignore it and hopefully, eventually, it goes away. Every awards nut knows that the BFCA has even less merit as a group than any of its members has individually, and that's saying a lot. Why would we even address it? You have never seen, and will never see, any other mention of the BFCA on this site.

4. No End in Sight. So glad to see this turning into 2007's documentary to beat for the Oscar. Later, when I'm back on home turf, we will address the disappointment I feel about Oscar's qualifying shortlist of docs, but No End in Sight is on it. Rent it: not only a solid, well-packaged film, but the handiest two-hour condensation of U.S. "policy" and its grievous, successive errors in Iraq that I have seen, partially because No End spends as much time articulating a sociological picture of Iraq post-2001 as it does making predictable (if fully deserved) wails against key U.S. officials. I admit that I'm glad to see the Boston scribes endorse the deliciously fun Crazy Love (reviewed here), but No End in Sight is a sturdier choice.

5. The Slavophilia of the LAFC. Last year, some smooth-talker in that group had the genius idea of coronating my own Best Actress choice, Luminita Gheorghiu of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, as their Best Supporting Actress. Even though, yes, she is a lead: see 1a. But I was so wowed by their adventurousness and lack of parochialism, I let it slide. This year, the same silver-tongued Cicero of the City of Angels persuaded her or his peers to rally behind the phenomenal and as-yet-unreleased 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days: their Best Foreign-Language Film of the Year and also their choice for Best Supporting Actor, in the form of Vlad Ivanov's dismaying and thuggish abortionist. And Anamaria Marinca was the runner-up to the lovely and deserving Marion Cotillard for Best Actress. I've already been planning to throw release patterns to the wind and include 4 Months in my year-end festivities. I figure that what I see in '07 stays in '07. But it's nice to feel the LAFC has your back in a case like this. Which reminds me...

6. No Country for Old Men. Julie Christie. Javier Bardem. The script for The Savages. Ratatouille. Sidney Lumet and the rest of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. They're all having great awards runs, and good on 'em. But don't expect to see any of them when the Nick's Flick Picks Honorees drop in early January. I'm not trying to make a point, y'all. I can be down with consensus: just ask Marion Cotillard. But the mix will be different when I'm cooking the batter. Who are your pets and dark horses that you're looking to laurel, even if no one else is going to?

The Fifties: A 2007 Progress Report

Just like last year, I have waited till I clocked 50 U.S. theatrical releases from this calendar year before I started thinking about the best of what I've seen. Granted, it's taken almost three weeks longer to see 50 movies from 2007 than it did in 2006, largely because most movies that opened this summer were sequels to franchises I already didn't like (Spider-Man, Rush Hour, Pirates of the Caribbean, and with apologies to the terrific second movie, Shrek). The other movies appeared to have Dane Cook in them, and I still don't understand who that is, or they had insupportable titles like Blood and Chocolate or Catch and Release, or they implied that it's easier to get legal benefits if you're gay, or they were about teenagers on stakeouts, or they were patently disgusting, or they were about being stupid. And none of them cast a legendary actress in a lead, except for Because I Said So, which had an insupportable title. From what I did see, some of which was still about being stupid (see: Alpha Dog, The Valet), and some of which were still sequels to franchises I dislike (Harry Potter), here are some achievements on which I'll look back fondly as we head into the fall, which I imagine to be three solid months of uninterrupted and Dane Cook-less masterpieces, full of well-rounded characters attaining legal and health-related benefits through marginally credible channels.

N.B. Between you and me, these aren't the Fifties so much as the Fifty-Two's. I finally caught 2 Days in Paris and Becoming Jane, so if we squeeze 'em in, the Fifties serve as my referendum on the winter, spring, and summer seasons. I've also caught two early-bird fall entries, The Brave One and The Bubble, but I'm not counting them in the categories below. 'Course we may as well, since they'd barely figure anyway.

BEST PICTURE
Day Night Day Night - Arresting in unexpected ways; surprising notes throughout
Deep Water - Incisive doc with narrative thrills and philosophical ambitions
Jindabyne - Fine-grained psychology + expressive technique + cultural commentary
Once - The miniaturist pleasure everyone describes, lovingly crafted
Zoo - Smartly shaped as a time capsule and a strange poem to the unknowable

BEST DIRECTOR
Andrea Arnold, Red Road - Brilliant with light, sound, and performance
John Carney, Once - Shrewd judgment about what to leave out, where to linger
Robinson Devor, Zoo - Shaping up as a true indie wonder, albeit a weird one
Ray Lawrence, Jindabyne - Novelistic in insight, but totally filmic execution
Julia Loktev, Day Night Day Night - Bold and concise with her unexpected vision

BEST ACTRESS
Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray - Invigorating and game, with unflagging cheer and gusto
Julie Christie, Away from Her - Smiles as she disappears, keeping her secrets
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en rose - You say potato, I say brilliant and deeply felt
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart - Impressive portrait of love and intelligence
Laura Linney, Jindabyne - Subtly nasty, humiliated, weary, entirely plausible

BEST ACTOR
Gabriel Byrne, Jindabyne - For once, his dour visage allows eloquent shadings
Don Cheadle, Talk to Me - Vocally adept, brilliant at comedy but still sincere
Shia LaBeouf, Transformers - Humanizes and enlivens this film for a long while
Ulrich Mühe, The Lives of Others - Artful reticence, complicated stillness
Gordon Pinsent, Away from Her - Bravely unsympathetic, tiny evolutions

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Deborra-Lee Furness, Jindabyne - Handles huge emotional shifts very deftly
Sidse Babett Knudsen, After the Wedding - Credible, flexible, hearty, enigmatic
Leslie Mann, Knocked Up - A comic archetype becomes a surprising personality
Vicky McClure, This Is England - Goes deeper and warmer than her Goth exterior
Julia Stiles, The Bourne Ultimatum - "It was difficult for me. With you."

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Martin Compston, Red Road - The most memorable character in a shady gallery
John Cothran, Black Snake Moan - A minister who isn't lofty or simplistic
John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac - Tightroping: has to tip his hand but still keep us guessing
Denis O'Hare, A Mighty Heart - A selfish person who doesn't see his foibles
Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn - Haunted and desperate without false affectations

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Deep Water - Artful arranging of superb materials and a great story
The King of Kong - Tense and colorful, cheap but creatively inspired
No End in Sight - Redraws the Iraq War as a drama of disenfranchisement
An Unreasonable Man - Various, evocative points of view on a divisive figure
Zoo - The I'm Not There of doc's, turning curiosity back on ourselves

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
2 Days in Paris - Terrific comic battering average, plus real feeling
Black Snake Moan - Works daringly and devilishly with exaggerated archetypes
Deep Water - Gorgeous balance of a specific tale and its wider contexts
Once - A keenly observed core, with light, revealing accents
Red Road - Enticingly suppressed motives find unpredictable releases

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Away from Her - Comfortable with connotation and quiet observation
The Bourne Ultimatum - Gimmicky and imperfectly directed, but great structural loops
Jindabyne - An ingenious, culturally acute reimagining of Carver
A Mighty Heart - Draws a tough, fractalized map of a desperate search
Zodiac - Bravely messy in its chronicle of petered-out obsession

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jindabyne - Suggestive framings on a wide canvas, bold overexposures
Ocean's Thirteen - Unrelated to the plot, but zesty and luminescent all the same
Red Road - Glowering colors, fascinating shadows and depths of field
Sunshine - Brilliant eye on the future, kind to actors and sets
La Vie en rose - Expert handhelds dial emotional intensity up and down

BEST FILM EDITING
Day Night Day Night - Equally adept with time lags and accelerated crises
Grindhouse - Flashy but taut and evocative work in two divergent styles
Jindabyne - Compresses a huge, rich story into a dense but fluid experience
Once - Cuts banish sentiment while emphasizing emotion
Zoo - Kaleidoscopic, interblending the factual with the poetic and speculative

BEST SOUND
Grindhouse - The usual bath of kitschy music and sharp, funny foley work
Hairspray - Musicals feel inevitable here, but this one's bright and bouncy
Hot Fuzz - All the best jokes are sonic; hilariously overdone
Once - The thrill of live performance, doting but measured
Talk to Me - Fresh musical choices; evokes a whole, lost culture of public sound

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
300 - An end in itself, but more arresting than Sin City
Bug - Unnerving throughout, with a second-act coup de theatre
Grindhouse - For the delirious Planet Terror: in-jokes everyone can enjoy
Hairspray - Dreamy pastels, plus a witty mix of the tacky and the joyous
Sunshine - A spaceship that's also a planet that's also a mental landscape

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
2 Days in Paris - Odd, evocative instrumentations cover a lot of tonal bases
Deep Water - Impressively vivid for a doc, without ostentation
Grindhouse - Again, all Planet Terror, jokey but electrifying