O! scars.

So this entire town is excited for the Academy Awards on Sunday. I'm pretty excited as well. After all, it's like the Stanley Cup Finals of cinema. (If I ever find myself actually winning an Oscar for anything, do note that I will lift the statuette over my head and kiss it like it was the said Stanley Cup. That's a promise.)

This is great year to actually watch the awards. It's the first award show to happen after the writer's strike, which means plenty of big stars and lame jokes for Jon Stewart to have to relay to the masses. But mostly, it's a big year because 2007 had some of the best films in almost a decade. For me, this is the first time I can remember where I'd seen all five nominated best picture films, and actually really enjoyed all of them! I think last year I saw The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, but that was it.

I recall telling my high school film teacher one year how I never see the nominated films, I figured because I didn't watch good films. She told me the best films aren'tnecessarily nominated. I think that was the year Fargo was nominated (which I saw and loved) but lost to The English Patient. Lame. Will the Coen Brothers ever get their Oscar... Yes! Hopefully this year!

And there was the year I saw 4/5 - in 98, when I loved Good Will Hunting, figured Titanic would win, and really thought L.A. Confidential was sensational and should have won. Ten years later, I still think that movie should have won. Damn, I love L.A. Confidential...

I surprisingly enjoy watching this award show, which is odd, because I hate all other award shows. And yes it's long-winded, and yes it's self-gratifying with montage after montage, and I don't care about fashion, and (you get the idea) , but I like watching and like trying to predict what will win. So as a public service to you, my reader, I will look at the best picture category. (I could go through each category and tell you my opinion and what will probably win, but I don't want you to hold it against me in your puny Oscar pools. Okay, just one. Daniel-Day Lewis for best actor, because he drinksevery-one's milkshake.

That being said... you're nominees are : Michael Clayton, Juno, Atonement, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men.

And the winner should be: No Country for Old Men!

Huzzah.


The day I saw that movie (black Friday, right before I had to close at Borders) I knew it was the best of the year. The film is simply chilling. It makes you feel as nervous and as intense as the characters and scenes throughout the film. Easily, one of the most terrifying film characters of all time is part of the thrust of this film. It's scope is deep, and it's story grabs you by the throat and pulls you through.

There Will Be Blood could also win, as an upset. This film is intense, deep and has a scope that captures not only American capitalism fundamentals, but thanks to the performance by Daniel-Day Lewis, one of the most delectable anti-heroes in cinema history. And it's beautifully directed and as a distinct vision.

I love JUNO and I feel like I spend way too much time defending why it should be nominated for best picture. It needs to be. Some movies are mighty and huge like therewillbeblood and NC4oldMen. Some are sweeping epics like Atonement, and dramatic tour De forces like Michael Clayton, but Juno is about people, real people ---only way more like-able! June has a social consciousness. Yes, it's more of a cute story, and a cute movie, but under the myspace/facebook quot-abilities is a film that does something more important than giving us a hip soundtrack... it takes a story about a teenage girl who gets pregnant, and doesn't preach. It doesn't demonize teen-sex, it doesn't hide from the idea of a girl getting an abortion, it doesn't treat the pregnancy like a tragedy, it just deals with it like anyone would with a surprise pregnancy. The film lets it's charactersexperience's tell the tale and Ellen Page's performance is as real as it is smart. She may have what may seem like overly clever dialogue, but it cracks, just like her own emotions as she deals with life. Again, I really love this movie.

Michael Clayton - what a film. It is so focused on it's characters that the story moves with so much subtext. It's a lawyer film, but it's a film about a man, dealing with heavy turns in both his professional and personal life, but it never deviates from the story of the film. But you feel everything Clayton is dealing with. I was surprised how great this film was. I just bought it today! I really shouldn't be buying dvds. But damn it ,I want to watch it again and again!

Oh and Atonement. I saw this movie literally a few hours after I finished reading the novel, which I loved. This should have been the kiss-of-death for this film, especially because the novel was so much about story-telling - particularly writing - which was easy to create in novel form... so I was delighted to see what a splendid job they did adapting this to a film. It's billed as this sweeping -period-romance, but it's not how I read the book, and it's not how I see the film. To me, it's the power ofdeceit, the power of imagination and what the a writer's mind can do with his/her power. Plus it's beautiful to look at.



So there you have it. To make it even more intense I'm shooting my next film project Sunday morning, and like the Superbowl, I get to experience the west coast time slot for the show... it starts at 5:00pm! No cursing the show for running over and me having to be at work early the next morning. Maybe I'll drive into Hollywood after the show and see if I can't get rundown by some celebrities...