Tilda Swinton, or Why I Love the Oscars

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

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

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

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

Good Night, and Good Luck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waking Up with Oscar

Why even front? You don't want any small talk.

BEST PICTURE (4/5 correct)
Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood
I'M HAPPY that sticking with Atonement was worth it, and that Juno is a movie I savor more than Diving Bell, which I thought would be here in its stead.

BEST DIRECTOR (3/5 correct)
Anderson, Coens, Gilroy, Reitman, Schnabel
I'M GIGGLING at my certainty that this would be Auteur Year when Gilroy and Reitman are here instead for movies that Hollywood just liked more than I guess they did Zodiac or Eastern Promises or (holy freezing temperatures, Batman!) Into the Wild. I'm sure Reitman will get a lot of flak for being here when his visual and technical ideas are pretty minimal, but he choreographed his ensemble better than any of his peers in this category.

BEST ACTRESS (3/5 correct)
Blanchett, Christie, Cotillard, Linney, Page
I'M A LITTLE SAD that I can't be happier for my new bosom buddy, Laura Linney, though I am quite happy for her, because I really wish Cate had budged for her instead of Angelina. Someone this morning reminded me that Zhang Ziyi was on all the same precursor lists that Cate was and still didn't rate with Oscar, which was very spirit-lifting. And whatever, Cate Blanchett is a great actress who does whatever anyone could with her movie; she's hardly The Green Mile. But: poor Angie, mostly because so many fewer people will see A Mighty Heart, now or later, than otherwise would have.

BEST ACTOR (4/5 correct)
Clooney, Day-Lewis, Depp, Jones, Mortensen
I'M THRILLED that people stopped d*cking around with Ryan Gosling and Emile Hirsch and nominated Tommy Lee Jones' implosive but fully articulated performance, one of the year's best, in Elah, which I was just complaining everyone had forgotten about. His inclusion makes this by far the strongest of any of the Best Actor lists we've seen through awards season, which is as it should be.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (5/5 correct)
Blanchett, Dee, Ronan, Ryan, Swinton
I'M ECSTATIC TILDA!!!! And a Todd Haynes movie! And Ruby Dee is an Oscar nominee! And my only perfectly predicted category!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (4/5 correct)
Affleck, Bardem, Hoffman, Holbrook, Wilkinson
I'M NEUTRAL because this category has been stable, give or take Hoffman vs. Jones, for so long now that I don't have anything to respond to. Though the clip of Michael Clayton they showed on Good Morning America reminded me that I really don't get Tom Wilkinson in that movie.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY (4/5 correct)
Juno, Lars, Michael, Ratatouille, Savages
I'M SELF-CRITICAL for changing at the last minute from what turned out to be the correct line-up to American Gangster in place of The Savages. I read in EW (you probably did, too) that this is the first-ever screenplay category with three solo women in the field? Crazy. I'm wondering if the full-on anti-homeskillet backlash will set in to a sufficient degree for Diablo Cody to lose this to Ratatouille or Michael Clayton.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY (4/5 correct)
Atonement, Away, Diving, No Country, TWBBlood
I'M PLEASED for Sarah Polley and prediction-proud about keeping Atonement, even though this list officially has nothing to do with my own list that I published this morning.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM (4/5 correct)
"12," Beaufort, Counterfeiters, Katyn, Mongol
I'M INTRIGUED at the possibility of getting to see these movies, especially "12" and Katyn and Mongol, but really, all of them sound kind of tantalizing in a way that Foreign Film nominees rarely do (and the Canadian, Italian, and Brazilian semifinalists sure didn't). Perhaps they will be released in the spring? Maybe around 4 months from now? 4 months and 3 weeks and ... ?

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE (1/5 correct)
No End in Sight, Operation Homecoming, Sicko, Taxi to the Dark Side, War/Dance
I'M SKEPTICAL because Sicko wasn't nearly the movie that Lake of Fire was, and I've heard nothing but raves about Body of War and Nanking, but No End in Sight and Taxi to the Dark Side are both superb (and Sicko is better than The Price of Sugar, which was the other short-lister I saw), so no need to be too miffed. I thought War/Dance was supposed to pass through Chicago in the fall; maybe it did, and I missed it?

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE (2/3 correct)
Persepolis, Ratatouille, Surf's Up
I'M IN THE SAME BOAT as everyone else who's going, "Surf's Up over The Simpsons Movie?" But I've also heard from somebody (you, Ann?) that Surf's isn't half-bad, and since I wasn't as bowled over by Ratatouille or Persepolis in the way the reviews implied I should be, maybe it's worth a look.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (4/5 correct)
Assassination, Atonement, Diving, No Country, TWBBlood
I'M MOSTLY HAPPY that this is a very strong race, even if I didn't like Atonement's morbid overexposures as much as a lot of people, and even if Into the Wild's omission seems actually churlish here, where it seems more like a matter of taste in other categories. (Yes, I understand that it's always a matter of taste.) No Country sure has support across the board, doesn't it? Will Deakins beat himself for the win or split his own vote and lose to Kaminski, or Elswit, or even McGarvey? They're probably all in the race.

BEST FILM EDITING (4/5 correct)
Bourne, Diving Bell, Into the Wild, No Country, TWBBlood
I'M VERY HAPPY about this being one of the year's sturdiest line-ups, and about the Bourne franchise finally having some Oscar noms to its credit, and about Into the Wild placing here, which I considered its strongest suit outside of the Song category. I assumed No Country had this sewn up (like Jean-Dominique Bauby's eyeball, yo!), but now looking at the list, I wonder if Bourne can spoil. Oh, and I deserve to have one race that I predicated better than Nathaniel did, right?

BEST ART DIRECTION (3/5 correct)
A.Gangster, Atonement, Golden Compass, Sweeney, TWBBlood
I'M FRUSTRATED that I didn't get my act together to see The Golden Compass, but I heard it was just so horrible. I also didn't see anyone predicting American Gangster for this category, but in retrospect it makes pretty good sense. Elated for Jack Fisk. I wonder if Sissy will wear a slim-tailored black suit with a white shirt that has a high collar?

BEST COSTUME DESIGN (3/5 correct)
Across the Universe, Atonement, Elizabeth: Full Throttle, Sweeney, La Vie en Rose
I'M BAFFLED as to why I didn't put La Vie en rose in my predictions instead of Love in the Time of Cholera, a less-admired movie by the same, recently deceased designer, Marit Allen. And more baffled by Across the Universe. Do we need to make Evan Rachel Wood look young? Let's give her A HEADBAND! Need to age her a little. How about...a TURTLENECK. Snooze-o-rama. I don't really understand costume designers. I love them, but I do not understand them. (Where is all the Western stuff?)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (2/5 correct)
3:10 to Yuma, Atonement, Kite Runner, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille
I'M PISSED that I have to go see The Kite Runner tonight. Dammit. That its inclusion comes at the exclusion (in my mind) of Alexandre Desplat's gorgeous work on Lust, Caution will only make me more sour about this experience. Who's going to be surprised if I don't like the movie? I'm so obviously neutral. (Wonderful pick with Beltrami for 3:10 to Yuma, though. Maybe the only nominee who made it onto my personal list but wasn't on my predictions.)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG (1/5 correct)
"Falling Slowly," "Happy Working Song," "Raise It Up," "So Close," "That's How You Know"
I'M THROWING UP to even be reminded of August Rush, and to see THREE Enchanted songs here, given that they were all pretty subpar. If "Falling Slowly" can't win this—I just went straight back to Neneh Cherry and Soul II Soul losing that Best New Artist Grammy to Milli Vanilli, which was an outrage well before The Revelation. I'm going to drop leaflets over Beverly Hills. This is an emergency. As with most elections, Americans obviously can't be trusted to choose correctly.

BEST SOUND (3/5 correct)
3:10, Bourne, No Country, Ratatouille, Transformers
I'M PETTY because this is the only category where I out-predicted Nathaniel and In Contention, even though none of us did so very well. Thank God No Country for Old Men is here, which restores my faith that the sound designers can still hear things beneath the decibel-threshold of a glass-factory explosion.

BEST SOUND EFFECTS (4/5 correct)
All of the above, minus 3:10, plus There Will Be Blood
I'M AGAIN WONDERING why the Sound Branch insists on separate categories, which makes terrific sense in principle, when in actual point of fact they barely do anything different with their choices. I clearly applaud Blood's inclusion here, but one still feels the redundancy.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS (2/3 correct)
Golden, Pirates, Transformers
I'M FLUMMOXED that, for the first time since 2000, when The Grinch and 102 Dalmatians were both up for Costume Design, I'm confronted with a category where I didn't see two of the nominees. And when there are only three to begin with, that sucks. And I saw 140 movies this year! And why did everybody hate 300 so much? Did it remind them of Into the Wild?

BEST MAKEUP (1/3 correct)
Norbit, Pirates, La Vie
I'M AT PEACE with having a second category where I've only seen nominee, and a second category where I only made one correct prognostication, because you would have had to spot my ticket to get me to see Pirates 3, and you would have had to kidnap my brother to get me to see Norbit. And we are talking about voters who have been breathing spray-on cosmetics and rubbing alcohol their entire professional lives.

TOTAL 64/91 correct = 70%
I'M SO TIRED I love you, Angelina! Call me, Sean! Hugs and congrats, Tilda and Jack (Fisk)! I want to go to bed... yet I can't help noticing that it's time to go to work.
BUT I'M A LITTLE LESS TIRED NOW (9:25am) and I'm realizing, 8 noms apiece for No Country and There Will Be Blood, and 7 apiece for Atonement and Michael Clayton: that's some tough Best Picture competition (and Juno is hardly out of it, since 4 is already the upper reaches of what it was ever going to get, with no technical artistry to distinguish it). I'm also thinking: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, according to the voters, has some of the year's best directing, writing, editing, and cinematography, but it's not one of the Best Pictures? I guess the actors weren't sufficiently impressed.

Alarm Call

Yep, I keep working the Björk angle. As Variety is reporting (I, of course, heard via Nathaniel), Jonny Greenwood's There Will Be Blood score has been disqualified for Oscar contention because, according to AMPAS, it incorporates too much music by other composers, and also too many of Greenwood's pre-existing compositions. Keep reading the Variety article, and you learn that Into the Wild has also been barred for having such a song-driven score. I guess we're not meant to worry about that bogus Babel win last year, or David Hirschfelder's nomination for Shine (just a wee bit of non-Hirschfelderiana in that score...), or the Godfather paradox that even Variety can't help but mention. What this really means is, I get a free pass to change my predix, which I wanted to change anyway, because Oscar probably wouldn't have gone for Greenwood's avant-gardism anyway. So:

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
ALL NEON LIKE The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Cave & Ellis); Atonement (Marianelli); Eastern Promises (Shore); The Kite Runner (Iglesias); Lust, Caution (Desplat)
UNRAVEL (aka IT'S NOT UP TO YOU, aka FROSTI, aka disqualified scores) Enchanted (Menken); Into the Wild (Brook, King, and Vedder); There Will Be Blood (Greenwood)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Grace Is Gone (Eastwood); Michael Clayton (Howard)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Beowulf (Silvestri); Ratatouille (Giacchino)

While I'm at it, since I totally, completely can't help it, here's one more change that I've just got to make, since ModFab's predictions reminded me that I forgot about American Gangster's screenplay as a possibility. So:

BEST ORIGINAL
SCREENPLAY
ALL NEON LIKE American Gangster (Zaillian); Juno (Cody); Lars and the Real Girl (Oliver); Michael Clayton (Gilroy); Ratatouille (Bird, Capobianco, Pinkava)
POSSIBLY MAYBE The Savages (Jenkins); Eastern Promises (Knight); Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Masterson); 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Mungiu)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Knocked Up (Apatow); Waitress (Shelley); Once (Carney); I'm Not There (Haynes)

I've emended both of these categories in the long prediction post and updated the explanatory logic as necessary. Surely, this is it? Will more rules be broken or categories thrown into disrepute? Will it turn out at midnight tonight that Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton really is genderless, and thus must be disqualified from all acting categories? Is Marion Cotillard really Edith Piaf? She did "die" suspiciously young...

Did Christopher Rouse (you say "Rouse," I hear "ruse"!) employ too many of the same editing techniques in The Bourne Ultimatum as he did in The Bourne Supremacy, thus disbarring himself from contention? You never know with the Academy till the last frigging minute. And even then, you still don't know.

Predictions on This Blog May Be Dumber Than They Appear (Final! Really, This Time!)

Or smarter than they appear. I suppose there's no reason to be pessimistic. Unless you count the fact that I've grown steadily worse at this as the years go by, possibly because I cannot bear to read almost any of the writers who are paid to obsess about this all year 'round. (If it ain't Nathaniel, who incidentally ain't paid, I ain't interested.) Or if you count the fact that even the Uncanny Seers among us don't seem to know what's going on with this year's contests, all of which seem to have two or even three hugely contested spots. Still, what I learned from Daniel Plainview—and what is he, if not a role model?—is that you don't get anywhere by doubting yourself. There's a whole OCEAN of OSCAR under our feet! Here's what I think is rising to the surface.

(For no particular reason, I'm naming all my categories after Björk songs. Consider it a silent invitation for anyone—Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton, Hal Holbrook—to show up "dressed" in a stuffed fowl.)

BEST PICTURE
ALL NEON LIKE Atonement; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Michael Clayton; No Country for Old Men; There Will Be Blood
POSSIBLY MAYBE Juno; Into the Wild
IT'S OH SO QUIET Sweeney Todd; American Gangster

I like to kick off with shooting myself in the foot as soon as possible, so I'm predicting against Juno, even though I like it better than all of the films I'm actually predicting, save (I think) There Will Be Blood. No Country is the one movie with no worries for this category, Atonement has shown enough strength with precursors that matter (like BAFTA and the Globes), Diving Bell peaked at the right moment (and is more highbrow than Juno), There Will Be Blood is a giant buzz-monster (and is more highbrow than Juno), and Michael Clayton is a solid inside-the-park home run for studio filmmaking (and is more highbrow than Juno). I'm guessing Into the Wild broke too early and that Sweeney Todd and American Gangster just didn't finally excite enough people, compared to the ardent camps that have built up around the other seven titles.

BEST DIRECTOR
ALL NEON LIKE Anderson, There Will Be Blood; Coens, No Country for Old Men; Fincher, Zodiac; Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Wright, Atonement
POSSIBLY MAYBE Penn, Into the Wild; Mungiu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days; Cronenberg, Eastern Promises; Polley, Away from Her
YOU'VE BEEN FLIRTING AGAIN Gilroy, Michael Clayton; Greengrass, The Bourne Ultimatum; Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead; Reitman, Juno
IT'S OH SO QUIET Bird, Ratatouille; Burton, Sweeney Todd; Scott, American Gangster

Into the Wild, for me, is the biggest riddle in this year's race: I can't tell if it's headed for a total shut-out or a raft of nominations or anything in between. Given the ardor of its biggest fans, and the stylistic ambitions that lead to its florid emotionalism, I can see where Penn has a better shot here than a workman like Gilroy. But given recent history, and given the wealth of directorial risks that paid off big-time this year, I think one of the director picks will really surprise, City of God- or Vera Drake- or United 93-style. Mungiu might be my wildest hope here, but he's been working the circuit, and Cronenberg and Polley represent Canadian filmcraft at its most established and most promising. (We know everyone is watching Away from Her, and if Polley were older, I think she'd make it.) In a field this crowded, it's probably smarter to stick with the season's habitual shortlistees, but I can't help but think that a year of excited reviews and fawning press—plus a breakthrough in DV artistry, decades of industry dues, a loyal and fervent cult following, and a horde of actors who seem eager to work with him—will make a difference for Fincher. Have you written me off as a nutjob yet?

BEST ACTRESS
ALL NEON LIKE Adams, Enchanted; Christie, Away from Her; Cotillard, La Vie en rose; Jolie, A Mighty Heart; Page, Juno
POSSIBLY MAYBE Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age; Linney, The Savages; Knightley, Atonement
IT'S OH SO QUIET Blonsky, Hairspray

The three front-runners are a given. I've been worried about Jolie, partially because I'm so defensive about how good A Mighty Heart is and how poorly it fared with the public that I'm nervous about getting my hopes up for her. I can see where she could fall to BAFTA nominees Blanchett (a boring nominee in a smelly movie) or Knightley (a glam girl wearing the best outfit in a period romance). Still, I'm banking on Jolie to pull this off, and to be joined for the ride by Amy Adams, who turned a dicey proposition into a huge kiddie hit that lots of voters will have taken their kids to (or their grandkids to), and we know how badly the studios need a new princess. Even Blonsky, who seems like the kind of candidate with no future past the Globes, did star in a well-liked word-of-mouth hit that's been playing on DVD for over a month. She's not unthinkable.

BEST ACTOR
ALL NEON LIKE Brolin, No Country for Old Men; Clooney, Michael Clayton; Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood; Depp, Sweeney Todd; Mortensen, Eastern Promises
POSSIBLY MAYBE Washington, American Gangster; McAvoy, Atonement; Hirsch, Into the Wild; Gosling, Lars and the Real Girl
IT'S OH SO QUIET Damon, The Bourne Ultimatum; Langella, Starting Out in the Evening; Jones, In the Valley of Elah; Amalric, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Okay, by now you think I am trying to get my predictions wrong. Not with Clooney, Day-Lewis, Depp, or (slightly shakier) Mortensen. But the Brolin thing: again, I think No Country for Old Men is the only movie we can assume everyone is seeing, and mostly admiring, whereas so many of his competitors' films (Lars, Into the Wild) seem divisive, as are their performances, and Langella's campaign never really got going. I'm thinking the fifth slot goes to a coattail lead from a Best Picture contender... though I'd prefer to see the No Country hype break more obliquely in Tommy Lee Jones' direction. His Elah performance, despite the patchiness of the film, is the great Once Was a Shoo-In, Now Everyone's Forgotten performance of the year.

BEST SUPPORTING
ACTRESS
ALL NEON LIKE Blanchett, I'm Not There; Dee, American Gangster; Ronan, Atonement; Ryan, Gone Baby Gone; Swinton, Michael Clayton
POSSIBLY MAYBE Keener, Into the Wild; Macdonald, No Country for Old Men; Garner, Juno; Redgrave, Atonement

As with lead actress, you don't get any points for guessing the three front-runners... although can I just mention the cold sweats I have gotten (metaphorically, so far) about Tilda turning into the Baz Luhrmann, Dennis Quaid, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Giamatti figure who shows up so predictably on every single list until the Oscar list? Maybe I know too many people who don't feel Tilda. (I know what you're thinking: I probably work in one of those Away from Her or Savages Alzheimer's clinics. How else to explain? But, weirdly, it isn't true.) Anyway: let's assume that Cate, Amy, and TILDA are safe. Oscar has been refreshingly unwilling in recent years to laurel the old folks just for being old, but in a vague field, Ruby Dee may still be able to work that angle, and I for one wouldn't begrudge her. As for the fifth spot, I can't decide if the No Country phenom will be big enough to hoist Kelly Macdonald, or if AMPAS will get as excited about Vanessa Redgrave's epilogue in Atonement as they did about her prologue in Howards End or if they really do want to marry Catherine Keener or if they'll all remember playing the kind of part that Jennifer Garner takes in Juno but not being nearly as ingenious and dexterous with it as she was. All of these scenarios feel plausible to me, but for now, I'm guessing that even though the Academy just invited another little girl to the same sockhop last year, they'll hand Saoirse Ronan a typewritten invite to this year's ceremony... thus allowing her to lie to all of her friends back home about who she saw there, doing what to whom. Nasty! Nasty!

BEST SUPPORTING
ACTOR
ALL NEON LIKE Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Bardem, No Country for Old Men; Holbrook, Into the Wild; Jones, No Country for Old Men; Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
POSSIBLY MAYBE Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War; Von Sydow, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
IT'S OH SO QUIET Dano, There Will Be Blood; Travolta, Hairspray

Look, ma – even I know when to xerox the SAG list! One of my favorite things about Movie Year 2007 is how many vivid performances arrived in the Supporting Actor field, where I usually start to snore. Another way of saying this is, I love that enough strong work emerged in Oscar-friendly movies that John Travolta probably won't get a nomination for a momentarily fetching but undeniably odd turn in Hairspray (looking unbecomingly like a one-man preview for Kung Fu Panda). Anyone out there who thought Assassination of Jesse James... was too long might have wished that Anton Chigurh had been on Brad's trail instead of Robert Ford: at that point, we'd have been talking about a Live Action Short. If Diving Bell hits as big as I'm expecting it to, Max Von Sydow might finally make good on some of that buzz that's been struggling to coalesce behind him, but I just don't see where the room is in this lineup. I suppose Jones has the narrowest hold, but after 14 years, isn't it time he were back in this crowd?

Why none of the Juno men was ever even a factor here—not Bateman, not Cera, not Simmons—remains a complete riddle, but it testifies to how that film's awards marketing has somehow been gobsmackingly brilliant and weirdly inconsistent at the same time. Also, if you're looking for an otherwise-surefire nominee who is only missing because of his film's release date, look no further than Chris Cooper in Breach. Arguably, even probably a co-lead, I realize, but you know this is where the studio would have slotted him if the studio had even tried, ever, even remotely, to do anything for him.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
ALL NEON LIKE The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Deakins); Atonement (McGarvey); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Kaminski); Into the Wild (Gautier); There Will Be Blood (Elswit)
POSSIBLY MAYBE No Country for Old Men (Deakins)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Wood, The Bourne Ultimatum (Wood); American Gangster (Savides)

Basically, the American Society of Cinematographers' list, save for the hair's-breadth substitution of Into the Wild for No Country for Old Men. Gautier is one of my favorite unnominated d.p.'s, which is either a point in his favor (overdue) or not (they don't get him, or like him, or know him). And it's not clear whether the embarrassment of never nominating him outweighs the embarrassment of Deakins never having won, and therefore wanting to double his chances. For all the splendid cinematography on view in this year's movies, I'll still be surprised if the final five deviate from my top six, and hugely surprised if anyone but Wood or Savides picks up the surprise slack.

BEST FILM EDITING
ALL NEON LIKE American Gangster (Scalia); The Bourne Ultimatum (Rouse); Into the Wild (Cassidy); No Country for Old Men ("Jaynes"); There Will Be Blood (Tichenor)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Sweeney Todd (Lebenzon); Michael Clayton (Gilroy); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Welfling); Atonement (Tothill)
IT'S OH SO QUIET 3:10 to Yuma (McCusker)

The American Cinema Editors preferred Michael Clayton over American Gangster, and it's exactly the kind of category where well-oiled Best Picture also-rans like MC tend to rack up a nod, but Scalia is a huge name and AG seems destined to make itself known in the tech categories. I'd love to see Juliette Welfling, the genius behind all those nervy Jacques Audiard pictures, pick up a nomination if Diving Bell really did cross over to a sizable audience, and I actually wonder if the frequently undervalued Tichenor is as secure here as many people probably expect. Still, I think this will be our year to observe what "Roderick Jaynes" actually looks like, and whether he brings "Peter Andrews" or "Alan Smithee" as his date to the ceremony. (All pseudonyms are gay. Everyone in Hollywood knows this.)

BEST SOUND
ALL NEON LIKE 3:10 to Yuma; American Gangster; The Bourne Ultimatum; Sweeney Todd; Transformers
POSSIBLY MAYBE Hairspray; There Will Be Blood; No Country for Old Men; Into the Wild
IT'S OH SO QUIET Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End; 300; Beowulf; Ratatouille

Somewhere, even more obviously than usual, I am making a mistake... except I can't seem to imagine this category without any of my top six choices missing. No Country for Old Men obviously (to me, anyway) deserves this award any way you cut it, but since the Oscars often opt for loud and expensive over nervy and resonant, I'm worried about No Country. There Will Be Blood and Into the Wild also seem like exactly the sorts of top-drawer contenders that would be friendly additions to this race, but with so many popular commercial titles like 3:10 to Yuma, AG, and Bourne in the way, I don't know how to predict the Sound branch's priorities. (For the record, the guild nominees were 300, Bourne, Into the Wild, No Country, and Transformers, which is a pretty solid list, if you ask me.)

STARLET WHO WILL BE
TAPPED TO PRESENT
THE SCIENTIFIC &
TECHNICAL AWARDS
BIG TIME SENSUALITY Jessica Alba; Keira Knightley; Katherine Heigl; Amy Adams; Anne Hathaway
THE MODERN THINGS Jessica Biel; Michelle Monaghan; Natalie Portman; Eva Mendes; Julia Stiles; Isla Fisher
UNRAVEL (aka CRYING, aka EARTH INTRUDERS) Lindsay Lohan; Natasha Lyonne; Amy Winehouse
IT'S OH SO QUIET Rachael Leigh Cook; Bridget Moynahan; Erika Christensen; Shiri Appleby; Shannon Elizabeth; Sacheen Littlefeather; Sally Kirkland; Linda Riss

Well, it has to be someone. (The last five doyennes: Gyllenhaal, Johansson, McAdams, Garner, Hudson.) Probably, this news has already been announced. But this still counts as testing my mettle.


BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
ALL NEON LIKE The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Cave & Ellis); Atonement (Marianelli); Eastern Promises (Shore); The Kite Runner (Iglesias); Lust, Caution (Desplat)
UNRAVEL (aka IT'S NOT UP TO YOU, aka FROSTI, aka disqualified scores) Enchanted (Menken); Into the Wild (Brook, King, and Vedder); There Will Be Blood (Greenwood)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Grace Is Gone (Eastwood); Michael Clayton (Howard)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Beowulf (Silvestri); Ratatouille (Giacchino)

Is Jonny Greenwood's music for There Will Be Blood too schizzy and crazy and unconventional to score a nomination? Probably. Is it actually too contemporary and stand-alone to always serve the movie? Quite possibly. (Oops! Disqualified anyway. See this post.) Is anything beside the Atonement score going to win this derby anyway? Unlikely. Is Atonement the Babel of 2007—i.e., easy to watch but inadequate to the slightest pressure of thought, and full of structural gimmicks that have nothing to say, even if it's still bound to win something, which is probably Original Score? Um, yep. So will James Newton Howard just keep scoring everything he can until he finally wins something? Probably. Will his streak of six losses finally end this year? Probably not.

BEST ANIMATED
FEATURE
ALL NEON LIKE Persepolis; Ratatouille; The Simpsons Movie
POSSIBLY MAYBE Bee Movie
IT'S OH SO QUIET Shrek the Third; Meet the Robinsons; Beowulf

Am I predicting these three titles because they have been so inveterate to every other list all season? Not really. Bee Movie was a Globe nominee and Shrek the Third has a shot at a BAFTA (both in Persepolis' stead). Am I predicting these three titles because they are the only animated features I saw this year? Very likely, unless it's the other way around.

BEST DOCUMENTARY
FEATURE
ALL NEON LIKE Autism: The Musical; Body of War; Nanking; No End in Sight; White Light/Black Rain
POSSIBLY MAYBE Please Vote for Me; Sicko; Lake of Fire; Taxi to the Dark Side; The Rape of Europa; For the Bible Tells Me So; The Price of Sugar; War/Dance
IT'S OH SO QUIET Operation Homecoming; A Promise to the Dead

Okay, so it's insane to me that Deep Water isn't here, and more predictable if still insane that The King of Kong also failed to make the semifinalist cut. At least that boring and utterly un-groundbreaking In the Shadow of the Moon got the cold shoulder, too. Among the qualifiers, most of the buzz seems to lie with the titles I haven't seen. I found Lake of Fire totally galvanizing, but I'm guessing that its structure is finally too loose and its territory too raw, even for the Documentary branch, and The Price of Sugar just doesn't delve far enough into the world it purports to evoke. Still No End in Sight's race to lose, but I hear great things about Body of War, Nanking, and the Okazaki film, White Light/Black Rain.

BEST FOREIGN
LANGUAGE FILM
ALL NEON LIKE "12" (Russia); Beaufort (Israel); The Counterfeiters (Austria); Mongol (Kazakhstan); The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Brazil)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Days of Darkness (Canada); Katyn (Poland); The Trap (Serbia)
IT'S OH SO QUIET The Unknown (Italy)

While we're on the subject of disappointing semifinalist lists, I will never understand how Cannes champ and tense, blazing, gutsy masterwork 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days failed to make the cut for this category. (I personally am at peace with the omission of Persepolis, the other high-profile absentee.) Having vented that churlish gripe, I have to admit this is a more auspicious-looking field than I first gave it credit for: Beaufort won the Silver Lion at Berlin, Katyn is by legendary Polish director and recent Honorary Oscaree Andrzej Wajda, Mongol is an exciting-looking epic directed by previous nominee Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains), "12" has great reviews and stars another former winner in this category (Burnt by the Sun writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov), and The Counterfeiters has also amassed some great notices as it's made its way around the world. And even though I'm less sanguine about the prospects of The Unknown and Days of Darkness (if you think Juno is self-obsessed and overwritten, check out a Denys Arcand movie...), they're also directed by past winners, who brought us Cinema Paradiso and The Barbarian Invasions. So, OK. Oscar may have a point, or at least a consistent thread in his tastes. Maybe I'm just rankled because it seems like 4 Months is the only East European film that didn't make the cut. Then again, that's not true—the other one I was pulling for, Macedonia's Shadows, from the director of the terrific 1994 nominee Before the Rain, also isn't here. Nor is the Hungarian splattergutfest Taxidermia, which would have made for a hilarious shockeroo surprise. So am I resolved to this field or not? I can't even decide for myself, though The Unknown is the only title I have a hard time seeing in the winner's circle. Which means it'll probably be nominated.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
ALL NEON LIKE 300; The Golden Compass; Transformers
POSSIBLY MAYBE Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End; I Am Legend
IT'S OH SO QUIET Evan Almighty; The Bourne Ultimatum

Let's stick with the categories that have pre-announced semifinalists, shall we? I'm a bit at a loss here, and I wonder—as I do in Makeup, especially, and somewhat in Sound Effects—whether we might wind up with a two-horse race as we sometimes do when these branches just can't get excited. Transformers feels like the shoo-in. Somehow, I'm gravitating to 300 because it made a pile of money and The Golden Compass despite the fact that lost a pile of money, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But Pirates feels a little old-tricornered-hat, surely, the third time around, and no Bourne film has ever made the cut here. (In fact, no Bourne film has ever been nominated for anything, but I can't even talk about that.) I Am Legend is probably here because of the artful depopulating and over-weeding of NYC, but those unimpressive zombie slash vampire slash rabies-victim creatures aren't going to help. Evan Almighty could be a spoiler, because there's always a Click or a Time Machine on the roster, so that people can pout, "That movie is 'an Academy Award Nominee'?!"

BEST MAKEUP
ALL NEON LIKE 300; Sweeney Todd; La Vie en rose
POSSIBLY MAYBE Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End; Norbit; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
IT'S OH SO QUIET Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Again, every film seems to have more liabilities than advantages: late-cycle sequels (Pirates, Harry), pancaked biopics (La Vie en rose), and Rick Baker fatsuit minstrelsy overkill extravaganzas of latex (Norbit) haven't gotten the free ride lately that they once did. Nor have prestige entries (Sweeney, Diving Bell) in this often dubious derby. That leaves 300 with nothing really against it, except the insultingly overdone Queeny Persian King and Hunchbacked Disabled Mongoloid, and all the PAM with Butter® used to simulate hardbodied Spartan perspiration. (Where is the line between Makeup, F/X, and Pierre et Gilles?) I can't figure it out. But I'm guessing Leonidas, Sweeney, and Edith on the medal stand, the latter of whom is indisputably the best singer-shouter in this crew. Maybe the three of them can get together and sing a Diane Warren medley, in case the writer's strike is still sapping the telecast of good material. Which reminds me of...

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
ALL NEON LIKE "Despedida" (Love in the Time of Cholera); "Falling Slowly" (Once); "Guaranteed" (Into the Wild); "Rise" (Into the Wild); "That's How You Know" (Enchanted)
POSSIBLY MAYBE "Come So Far (Got So Far To Go)" (Hairspray); "Walk Hard" (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story)
IT'S OH SO QUIET "If You Want Me" (Once); "Grace Is Gone" (Grace Is Gone); "A Dream" (Freedom Writers)

When I first saw Once with Nathaniel, I remember turning to him after and saying, "Well, at least they'll get to perform that song (read: "Falling Slowly") on the Oscars, right? Won't that be great?" And he looked at me so fondly but also pityingly, like I had just said, "Doesn't the best person always win the presidential election?" or "Isn't Renée Zellweger really making the most of her giant talent and miraculous good fortune?" I saw where he was coming from, but Once has remained enough of an audience favorite and this field has remained wispy enough that I still feel "Falling Slowly" is a threat to win, though there's a lot of coffee-shop rock to compete with here, which may give other styles like bubblegum pop ("Come So Far") cheesy parody ("Walk Hard"), and cheesy is-it-parody? ("That's How You Know") a comparative advantage. The Into the Wild double-dip that I foresee here is a vote for the film and not so much to Eddie Vedder, who doesn't seem completely ready for his Academy moment, even though I loved what he did for the movie.

BEST SOUND EFFECTS
ALL NEON LIKE The Bourne Ultimatum; Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End; Ratatouille; Spider-Man 3; Transformers
POSSIBLY MAYBE No Country for Old Men; The Golden Compass; I Am Legend; The Kingdom
IT'S OH SO QUIET Beowulf; 300; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Evening; Starting Out in the Evening

Just kidding, of course, but this category tends to bore me, because the Sound branch more and more rarely capitalizes on the difference between the overall sound mix (i.e., Best Sound) and the incorporation and editing of specific noises and foley effects (i.e., Best Sound Effects). Remember back in '96 when there was no crossover between these categories? Last year, I'm pretty sure, four of the five were the same. A good rule is to think of which five films spring most instantaneously to mind when you hear the phrase "WHIZZZZzzzz BANG!" Give or take a slot for Pixar. So I'm going with that. But still, really, truly, don't rule out Evening. All those lapping waves. All those barely audible hormonal surges. All that Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard or Whatever paint drying. All those exasperated sighs of flagrantly typecast actors. Your nightmare, perhaps, but a foley artist's dream.

BEST ART DIRECTION
ALL NEON LIKE Across the Universe (Friedberg); Atonement (Greenwood); Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Craig); Sweeney Todd (Ferretti); There Will Be Blood (Fisk)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Hairspray (Gropman); Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Heinrichs); The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Norris); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Eric, Ott)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Dyas); The Golden Compass (Gassner); Michael Clayton (Thompson)

I always find Art Direction, i.e. Production Design, to be the hardest race to prognosticate, because it's so unclear whether the voters want outlandish spectacle or tasteful period or loopy whimsy or franchise stability or safe mimicry or props with dust on them (i.e., The Cider House Rules). It's clear that they don't want effects-enhanced stylization or animation, which is why things like 300 and Ratatouille are out, even though they probably deserve to be here, or at least very very close runners-up. I'm feeling pretty good about Atonement, Harry Potter, and Sweeney Todd, and although Across the Universe split a lot of audiences (and Titus didn't pan out in this category), I think Julie Taymor still has enough enthusiasts to qualify. That leaves one spot, I hope, for Jack Fisk's baroque-canvas blend of empty space and detailed realism in There Will Be Blood. After missing in this category for Mulholland Drive (short-sighted) and The New World (genuinely unforgivable), Mr. Sissy Spacek deserves his moment in the sun.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
ALL NEON LIKE The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Norris); Atonement (Durran); Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Byrne); Love in the Time of Cholera (Allen); Sweeney Todd (Atwood)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Hairspray (Ryack); There Will Be Blood (Bridges); 3:10 to Yuma (Phillips); Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Rose, Dann); Lust, Caution (Pan)
IT'S OH SO QUIET The Golden Compass (Myers); 300 (Wilkinson); Across the Universe

The Costume Designers occasionally lose their minds, viz. 102 Dalmatians, and they're not immune to the "charms" of kitsch like Troy, which is why I've got 300 as a dark horse here. Yes, you're allowed to leave your cast nearly naked and win a Costume Design nomination, as Sandy Powell proved with Mrs. Henderson Presents, and deservedly so—which is also why Lust, Caution has a shot. Still, I think the front-runners are fairly clear, give or take the confusion of how much (or which) Old West one category can take. And though I've said it before, Ian McEwan describes Keira Knightley's green dress to within a stitch of its life, which makes Jacqueline Durran's inevitable nod something like laureling the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone team for doing exactly what J.K. Rowling told them to do. Still, Durran did such lovely work for Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice that it's hard for me to begrudge her. There's also no percentage in it.

BEST ADAPTED
SCREENPLAY
ALL NEON LIKE Atonement (Hampton); Away from Her (Polley); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Harwood); Into the Wild (Penn); No Country for Old Men (Coens)
POSSIBLY MAYBE Charlie Wilson's War (Sorkin); There Will Be Blood (Anderson)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Zodiac (Vanderbilt); Gone Baby Gone (Affleck, Stockard); The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik)

The top seven contenders make this quite a competitive race, especially given that Assassination, Gone Baby Gone, and Zodiac would all feel like semi-comfortable nominations in many other years. Inevitably, the Screenplay categories yield at least one genuinely surprising omission, and I'm betting on There Will Be Blood: misgivings about that film tend to focus on the writing more than any other element, and I'm wondering if the branch that has historically been kind to P.T. Anderson will suddenly turn on him just as the directors start catching up. More than that, I just can't think of why the other five would miss, including my "surprise" pick, Away from Her, an almost universally admired movie that is "sensitive" and "literary" in just the way that often plays to these voters. Even Atonement strikes me as a little shakier, though it will probably qualify.

BEST ORIGINAL
SCREENPLAY
ALL NEON LIKE American Gangster (Zaillian); Juno (Cody); Lars and the Real Girl (Oliver); Michael Clayton (Gilroy); Ratatouille (Bird, Capobianco, Pinkava)
POSSIBLY MAYBE The Savages (Jenkins); Eastern Promises (Knight); Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Masterson); 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Mungiu)
IT'S OH SO QUIET Knocked Up (Apatow); Waitress (Shelley); Once (Carney); I'm Not There (Haynes)

It ends with a chair. I'm not as optimistic as some about Juno's overall nomination haul, but surely this is where it can't miss, and Lars and the Real Girl and Michael Clayton have been mainstays through awards season. Tradition offers a good boost to Ratatouille, and even though The Savages was a critical darling, it never quite crossed over to the other branches (or the public) in the way that I expected, so I'm handing its spot to the big studio baby, American Gangster, by past winner, frequent nominee, and Hollywood fixture Steven Zaillian. (After All the King's Men, the guy could sure use a boost.) Even beyond The Savages, the other runners-up will put some heat into this race, but I'm still reasonably confident about this final five.

WHAT THIS ALL MEANS
LEADERS Atonement (8), No Country for Old Men (7), Into the Wild (6), There Will Be Blood (6), Michael Clayton (5), Sweeney Todd (5)
GOOD SHOWINGS American Gangster (4), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (4), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (4), The Bourne Ultimatum (3), Ratatouille (3), Transformers (3)
SMALL FRIES 300 (2), Away from Her (2), Eastern Promises (2), Enchanted (2), Juno (2), Love in the Time of Cholera (2), La Vie en rose (2)
SINGLE SERVINGS 3:10 to Yuma, Across the Universe, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Golden Compass, Gone Baby Gone, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I'm Not There, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, Lust, Caution, A Mighty Heart, Once, Persepolis, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Simpsons Movie, Spider-Man 3, Zodiac (all 1)
SHUTOUTS Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, Hairspray, I Am Legend, Sally Kirkland, Margot at the Wedding, Bridget Moynahan, The Savages, Sicko (all 0)

Montgomery Clift Blog-a-Thon: The Search

I'm a few hours late, but Montgomery Clift has waited 87 years for this blog-a-thon, 41 of them posthumously, so I'm guessing three hours in Central Standard Time aren't going to make him roll over in his grave. Plus, Nathaniel's parties tend to run late into the evening. Trust me, I know. And, I have an excellent excuse for being otherwise occupied, but more on that tomorrow. Best of all, I only have nice things to say about Monty in his first released movie, The Search, which I finally screened this morning after many years of anticipation. I think it's a high point for Monty and even more so for its director, Fred Zinnemann, and if you surf through the comments on her own phenomenal post, you'll find that Self-Styled Siren agrees with me, and who could want better validation than that?

Here, then, is my full review of The Search, and here is the rest of the blog-a-thon. Read them, love them, and rent more Monty! (I have seen 8 of his 17 movies, and these write-ups make me want to see more, especially The Misfits, which I own on DVD but have never watched, Indiscretion of an American Wife and Wild River, which I have on tape from TCM somewhere around here, and Freud, which is apparently harder to find than a good therapist whom your HMO will actually cover.)

Supporting Actress Sundays: 1990

It's That Time of the Month again, when all of the acolytes of actressing collect at StinkyLulu's house to stump for and swipe at the best and the worst of a given year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar roster. Up to bat this month are the contenders from 1990. Together, they constitute a redoubtable and dissimilar field of actresses but, perhaps, a middle-of-the-road group of performances. You can, and should, read all about that over at the Smackdown. Dip into the warm, perfumed waters of the Comments section, and you'll also see that my own dream list of nominees for that year is probably:

GLENN CLOSE in Reversal of Fortune, who somehow missed a mention despite the film's multiple noms in leading categories, and despite being an 0-for-5 bridesmaid that everyone seems to like;
WHOOPI GOLDBERG in Ghost, who actually won the thing and, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't owe anybody an apology for that;
DIANE LADD in Wild at Heart, a performance championed by several Smackdowners despite the fact that most of us, myself included, have little love for the film;
JENNIFER JASON LEIGH in Miami Blues, who Tim and I agree does an affecting, funny, and atypically unhistrionic job of underplaying her dim Florida call-girl (and has the cinema's all-time best scene concerning vinegar pie); and
SHIRLEY MACLAINE in Postcards from the Edge, a film which you should already know is a favorite, in which MacLaine is an almost Whoopi-level hoot and a holler, and also a game belter and a surprisingly tough cookie, doing a terrific acting duet with Meryl Streep

Mary Alice in To Sleep with Anger might belong here, but she's construable as a lead, and I haven't seen the film in a long while. Helen Mirren also deserves a consolation prize, or maybe an actual nod, for making such brilliant, suggestive use of her screen time in The Comfort of Strangers, acing that Pinter dialogue and adopting a demure voice and delicate demeanor that still puts everyone on edge.

Of the three actress vehicles from 1990 that I screened in the last 24 hours, as a build-up exercise to this morning's Smackdown, the jewel is Paul Brickman's Men Don't Leave, in which fans of You Can Count on Me or Truly, Madly, Deeply will recognize another tart, carefully measured, wonderfully acted tale of bereavement, quiet comedy, and persuasively wrought ties to family, neighbors, lovers, and friends. Joan Cusack gives one of her best Kooky Joan performances as the downstairs eccentric who's putting the moves on Jessica Lange's 17-year-old son, very well played by Chris O'Donnell; Arliss Howard and Kathy Bates are also incredibly deft and funny in their roles as Lange's pseudo boyfriend and insensitive boss. Lange comes closer to Tootsie-style melancholy comedy than she has before or since, and it's nice to see her at comparative ease for once. The writing, especially in the first two-thirds of the film, is clever and economical, and the editing achieves poignancy not by dawdling but through carefully timed pruning and expertly showcased moments. B

Bates pops up in a single scene of Luis Mandoki's White Palace, which also features a generation-gap relationship where the woman is again the senior partner. Susan Sarandon has several effective scenes as a working-class waitress at a "White Palace" restaurant that primarily slings bite-sized hamburgers (uh....), and James Spader gives his eerie, clammy eroticism another go as the upwardly mobile yuppie whom Sarandon takes home for a hot roll in the sack. Spader has a Sadness in His Past that he won't snap out of; Sarandon also has a Sadness in Her Past that she pretends to have snapped out of, which is a good thing, because the screenplay barely makes it playable. All in all, White Palace is one of those movies that rails against embarrassment and deceit while constantly lying and emanating embarrassment about the grief, the religious disparity, and the class divide between its characters, though Sarandon does sell a great fuck-you speech as she storms out of a well-appointed Thanksgiving dinner. C

The movie could have been worse but also could have been much better, which also describes Philip Kaufman's gorgeously photographed Henry & June. Sadly, the director's follow-up to The Unbearable Lightness of Being is nowhere near as confident or as mysterious. The effortful recreation of 1930s Paris looks fussy and tacky despite Philippe Rousselot's diligent attempts to sublimate it, the script is full of faux-serious and ersatz-literary howlers, and the cast simply isn't up to the complexities or the charismas of their characters. Fred Ward and Maria de Medeiros give things an honest go, but either they don't have a knack for stylized performance, or else their maladroit versions of realist acting come across as failed stylization. Kevin Spacey and Richard E. Grant are cloying in second-tier parts, and Uma Thurman is, as so often, a disaster. The period seemingly means nothing to her except a reason to assume awkwardly "sultry" poses and stares in a series of exotic outfits, and she hasn't got the head for the writerly themes nor the physical grace required for the slinky character and mise-en-scène. Some welcome touches of wit are scattered through the film, and you can see the smarter, tighter movie lurking beneath the existing version, but it's still a bit of an ordeal. C

As for the nominated Supporting Actress movies, I'd give The Grifters a B– for nastily diverting but annoyingly hollow showmanship; Goodfellas an A– for prodigious, engaging technique and daringly comic overtones, whatever its lapses into autopilot machismo and style for style's sake; Ghost a B+ (and y'all can complain if you want to) for playing its sentimental plotline affectingly straight and also for laughs, and working the machinery of Pop Cinema quite deftly; Wild at Heart a C+ for finding 20 minutes' worth of truly startling images within 124 minutes' worth of drafty self-indulgence; and Dances with Wolves a B for telling an embarrassingly Uncle Tom's Cabin-level tale of white male sentiment, and orbiting around a terrible Costner performance, but nonetheless achieving real majesty in its score, its cinematography, and its editing.

Supporting Actress Sundays: 1971

Nothing like a Tuesday post to tell you what happened on Sunday, but is anyone else having that sensation of end-of-summer time delay? If you read this blog, you probably also read StinkyLulu's religiously enough that you already know that the 1971 Supporting Actress Smackdown played out this weekend, distinguished from past Smackdowns by the large flock of participants (nine!) and by the huge divergences of opinion about almost every performance. It's a pretty fascinating roster, partly because, in an increasingly rare Oscar move, all of the turns are legitimately supporting ones; partly because the films are such a gaggle of oddities, blending very strong elements with very weak ones (except for Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things about Me?, which is almost entirely terrible); and partly because the turns themselves often blend strong and weak elements in unusual and difficult combinations. Just like last month, when my preferred candidate (and, in that case, Oscar's) got a pretty bad drubbing from the rest of the group, I once again backed the losing horse in the Smackdown derby: Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge, a film so lacerating in its anatomy of misogyny (and occasionally over-proud of its immersion in such misogyny) that it badly needs and greatly benefits from Ann-Margret's soft, discomfiting sincerity as one of the women that Jack Nicholson all but annihilates over the course of the film.

My pals Stinky and Queering the Apparatus both raised articulate objections to Ann-Margret's work, but because the visual and tonal atmosphere of Carnal Knowledge verges so heavily on the sterile and abstract, I admired the inertia of Ann-Margret's performance, its unironic woundedness, her simultaneously dim and pointed pauses, and the sad way in which her voice and face and body hover away from the script instead of getting drawn into its angular shapes and severe rhythms. In a strange paradox, I think she's the least talented and resourceful of the nominated actresses (also to include Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, double Tony-winner Margaret Leighton, and the indomitable Barbara Harris), but, save for Harris, she does the ablest job of fighting for her character and shifting the ground of the movie, quite against the efforts of her director. Most of the directors of these films were greater hindrances than helps to their actors, but whereas Peter Bogdanovich turns the credible, interesting women in The Last Picture Show's script into glassy, symptomatic figures of Womanhood, and Burstyn and Leachman find no way out of his oppressive and reductive aesthetic, Ann-Margret inherits a glassy and symptomatic script and creates a real woman inside it—palpably real in her anomie and neglect, and her barely adolescent despair inside a ripely adult body—and she complicates rather than adhering to or betraying the style or flow of the piece. (And to Stinky's objections that Ann-Margret forgets that Bobbie is supposed to be fun, I'd counter that it's Nicholson and Garfunkel who keep insisting that she's "fun," but surely their myopic and cruel perspectives are not to be trusted, at least not necessarily.)

I'd seen Carnal Knowledge once before and found its atmosphere so noxious and its aesthetic so highfalutin in relation to its subject that I forgot how impressed I was with Ann-Margret, and I probably underestimated the film a little bit, too. I still wouldn't recommend it, exactly, although Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, and a late-arriving Rita Moreno are all quite good, and I wouldn't recommend any of the other films, either, except insofar as Oscar found five performances that are truly worth arguing over in this field, and all of them relate to their films (often redeeming whole chapters of their films) in curious and memorable ways, even when they don't always work out. Go read the post and the long necklace of Comments that have since been added, and keep chiming in... and come back for 1990 next month, when I suspect I will once again fall into a critical minority on at least two counts. But we'll cross that crazy grifter and that happy medium when we get to them.

Best Actress Update: 5 More Down, 70 to Go

The theme this time is: Great Ladies of History

Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
(Lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda)
I have been consciously postponing Joan of Arc for a while now; you can smell the elephantiasis and the box-office desperation from a mile away. Joan of Arc is the sort of movie that was made so that it could be promoted, and somehow, even though Bergman won a Tony onstage in this role, her casting in the film seems calibrated more toward PR than dramatic plausibility. Her first scenes are uniquely uncomfortable, wi