I told you I sucked at picking the Oscars

So, I was 9 for 20. Horrible, yes, but about as successful as usual.

Winners are in red.

PICTURE
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Ray
Sideways

DIRECTOR
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Taylor Hackford, Ray
Mike Leigh, Vera Drake
Alexander Payne, Sideways
Martin Scorsese, The Aviator (will win) (that's it: Marty will never, ever win)

ACTOR
Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda
Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Jamie Foxx, Ray (will win)

ACTRESS
Annette Bening, Being Julia
Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace
Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Alda, The Aviator
Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Jamie Foxx, Collateral
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Clive Owen, Closer

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, The Aviator
Laura Linney, Kinsey
Virginia Madsen, Sideways (will win)
Natalie Portman, Closer
Sophie Okonedo, Hotel Rwanda

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Aviator
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (will win)
The Incredibles
Hotel Rwanda
Vera Drake

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Before Sunset
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win) (hahaha! go Sideways!)
Motorcycle Diaries
Sideways

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Aviator (will win)
House of Flying Daggers
The Passion of the Christ
The Phantom of the Opera
A Very Long Engagement

ART DIRECTION
The Aviator (will win)
Finding Neverland
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Phantom of the Opera
A Very Long Engagement

COSTUME DESIGN
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Ray
Troy (will win) (in my defense, I picked this one completely at random)

EDITING
The Aviator
Collateral
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Ray

SCORE
Finding Neverland
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Passion of the Christ (will win) (haha!)
The Village

SOUND
The Aviator (will win) (should have gone with my instincts and picked Ray)
The Incredibles
The Polar Express
Ray
Spider-Man 2

SONG
"Accidentally in Love," Shrek 2
"Al Otro Lado Del Rio," The Motorcycle Diaries (apparently, the song is much better sans Santana)
"Believe," The Polar Express
"Learn to Be Lonely," The Phantom of the Opera (will win)
"Look to Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin)," The Chorus

VISUAL EFFECTS
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I, Robot
Spider-Man 2 (will win)

MAKEUP
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Passion of the Christ (will win) (haha! even though it deserved this one)
The Sea Inside

SOUND EFFECTS EDITING
The Incredibles
The Polar Express
Spider-Man 2 (will win)

ANIMATED FEATURE
The Incredibles (will win)
Shark Tale
Shrek 2

DOCUMENTARY
Born into Brothels
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Super Size Me (will win)
Tupac: Resurrection
Twist of Faith

Blatant plug for my crap elsewhere

Yes, my creative writing efforts continue to spread across the internet like the hideous, flesh-eating cancer they are: I present to you That's When I Reach for My Revolver, a continuous series of plays by yours truly. It's like a TV show, only in internet form, without actors or actual sets -- play it out in your head with your own cast. Have fun with it. And tell your friends -- it'd be nice if more than three people read it. Unless, of course, it's really bad...then don't tell anyone.

And the Oscars are about fifteen hours away. My choices stand as I made them.

Cinematic hell and the debut of Dave Matthews: Actor

Constantine and Because of Winn-Dixie open today. The latter features the acting debut of some guy named Dave Matthews, who is apparently a musician of some kind (can't remember the name of Dave Matthews's band...right on the tip of my tongue...oh well); the former features Keanu Reeves vs. the Devil.

The questions: a) Am I really enough of a DMB fan to go see a kids' movie about a dog just to see Dave acting? And b) Is a single positive review enough to get me into the theater to see frickin' Constantine...even if that review is from an auspicious source?

These are the questions.

Oh, Son of the Mask opens today as well. But fuck that.

I Pick the (Stupid) Oscars

My, oh my, but the Oscar field is kinda yawn-inducing. In this year, with so many excellent films to choose from -- like those on my top twelve list -- the Academy picked a rather boring, no-risk group of flicks to honor. What a pity.

In the Best Picture race, we're stuck with one great film (Sideways), one good one (Ray), and two so-so movies geared directly at the Oscar voters (The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby). The last film, Finding Neverland, I can't even bring myself to go see.

But still -- it's the Oscars. It's the biggest night for movies, and there's still a part of me that takes them seriously (too seriously, to tell you the truth). So not only will I comment on this year's nominees and deserving winners (and those whom the Academy forgot about and/or ignored) but pick who will win on February 27th. I generally don't do that last part, because I'm horrible at it, but I'm feeling lucky.

So let's get to it.

PICTURE
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Ray
Sideways (should win)

It was criminal not to nominate: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Dogville

DIRECTOR
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Taylor Hackford, Ray
Mike Leigh, Vera Drake
Alexander Payne, Sideways (should win)
Martin Scorsese, The Aviator (will win)

It was criminal not to nominate: Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine; Lars Von Trier, Dogville

ACTOR
Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda
Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Jamie Foxx, Ray (will win) (should win)

It was criminal not to nominate: Paul Giamatti, Sideways

ACTRESS
Annette Bening, Being Julia
Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace
Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (should win)

It was criminal not to nominate: Uma Thurman, Kill Bill Vol. 2

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Alan Alda, The Aviator
Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Jamie Foxx, Collateral (should win)*
Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Clive Owen, Closer

It was criminal not to nominate: Mark Wahlberg, I Heart Huckabees

*I think Foxx should win because his was the best performance of these five. But I don't think he should be nominated at all here...because his role was the lead in Collateral, not supporting. Stupid Oscars.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, The Aviator
Laura Linney, Kinsey
Virginia Madsen, Sideways (will win) (should win)
Natalie Portman, Closer
Sophie Okonedo, Hotel Rwanda

It was criminal not to nominate: Patricia Clarkson, Dogville

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Aviator
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (will win) (should win)
The Incredibles
Hotel Rwanda
Vera Drake

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Before Sunset
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Motorcycle Diaries
Sideways (should win)

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Aviator (will win)
House of Flying Daggers (should win)
The Passion of the Christ
The Phantom of the Opera
A Very Long Engagement

ART DIRECTION
The Aviator (will win)
Finding Neverland
Lemony Snicket's An Unfortunate Series of Events (should win)
The Phantom of the Opera
A Very Long Engagement

It was criminal not to nominate: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

COSTUME DESIGN
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Ray
Troy (will win) (should win)

EDITING
The Aviator
Collateral (should win)
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby (will win)
Ray

It was criminal not to nominate: Eternal Sunshine; Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (I'm not sure if docs are eligible for this award, but Monster certainly deserves at least a nomination. Watch the film again, and admire the way the footage is cut together, scenes folding within scenes for maximum narrative clarity and emotional insight.)

SCORE
Finding Neverland
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (should win)
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Passion of the Christ (will win)
The Village

It was criminal not to nominate: I Heart Huckabees

SOUND
The Aviator (will win)
The Incredibles (should win)
The Polar Express
Ray
Spider-Man 2

SONG
"Accidentally in Love," Shrek 2 (should win)
"Al Otro Lado Del Rio," The Motorcycle Diaries
"Believe," The Polar Express
"Learn to Be Lonely," The Phantom of the Opera (will win)
"Look to Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin)," The Chorus

It was criminal not to nominate: "America, Fuck Yeah!," Team America (hey, "Blame Canada" was nominated)

VISUAL EFFECTS
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (should win)
I, Robot
Spider-Man 2 (will win)

MAKEUP
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Passion of the Christ (will win) (should win)
The Sea Inside

SOUND EFFECTS EDITING
The Incredibles
The Polar Express
Spider-Man 2 (will win) (should win)

ANIMATED FEATURE
The Incredibles (will win) (should win)
Shark Tale
Shrek 2

DOCUMENTARY
Born into Brothels
The Story of the Weeping Camel
Super Size Me (will win)
Tupac: Resurrection
Twist of Faith

I can't pick a should-win, because I haven't seen any of them.

It was criminal not to nominate: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

The final tally as I see it:
Million Dollar Baby -- 5
The Aviator -- 4
Passion, Spider-Man 2 -- 2
Eternal Sunshine, Ray, Super Size Me, Sideways, The Incredibles, Phantom, Troy -- 1

Feel free to critique my choices. I know my pick for MDB is kinda risky, especially when I'm calling Director for Marty...but I've got a hunch.

Million Dollar Baby

[note: this review contains no spoilers. not really. not that you're going to able to avoid reading them somewhere else anyway.]

At a critical point late in the film, grizzled boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) gives some desperate advice to his fighter, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank): when your opponent leaves herself open, turn to her back and start pounding the sciatic nerve until she can't stand up. And make sure the ref doesn't see you.

Regrettably, Eastwood as director does something very similar with Million Dollar Baby: once your back is turned, he slams you where you're weak to try to take you to the mat. Trouble is, the setup is so obvious and the script (by Paul Haggis, based on two stories by F.X. Toole) is so ham-handed that when Eastwood's punches land in the third act, you just feel cheated, not knocked out.

Sing along, you know the words: White Trash Beautiful Maggie, on the run from a hellish childhood and a lost father, winds up in a gym belonging to Grumpy Old Man Frankie, a washed-up trainer from the old days. Frankie's consumed by guilt -- there's an estranged daughter he's lost contact with, and still blames himself for the in-ring injuries sustained by Scrap (Morgan Freeman, playing the same role he's been playing for about a decade now), his janitor and only friend. Frankie goes to Catholic Mass every day (every day for 23 years, we're told), largely to torment the priest with the stupid questions you'd expect from an eight-year-old ("So three Gods in one God? Like Snap, Crackle and Pop?"). Maggie drops into the gym unnanounced, asking to be trained, because boxing is "the only thing that ever made me feel good." Frankie resists, but Maggie's Fierce Determination and Winning Smile convince him, and Frankie amps up the training.

It's distressing to see a filmmaker of Eastwood's undeniable caliber (Mystic River, Unforgiven) stoop to such obvious sports-flick cliches, but there they are. Even stranger is the Scrap character -- he serves virtually no purpose whatsoever other than to call Eastwood "boss" and to pad the film's running time with a bizarre, ineffective subplot about a nearly-retarded wannabe named Danger. Freeman has the Oscar nomination and the buzz that might finally get him a trophy, but even he can barely mask his contempt for the character -- he shuffles through the motions and performs his (unnecessary, unwanted and narratively ludicrous) voice over like he's on sedatives. A lesser actor would drown in this role, but Freeman brings it gravity simply by showing up. As he usually does.

Eastwood and Swank seem to fare a little bit better, if only because the script is at least halfway interested in them as characters. But even they end up mostly as bare sketches, as stereotypes more than actual people. I called Maggie "white trash" up there, and I did it because that's literally all I know about her: the film tells us she's "white trash" and leaves it there. Eastwood and Haggis illustrate by showing her family, a nightmare of every extra on every COPS episode you've ever seen, with bare feet and screaming babies and brothers waiting to get out of prison. Frankie grumbles around his gym, snapping more cliches like "Girlie, tough ain't enough"; he also reads Yates and tries to learn Gaelic, for no real reason other than Haggis confusing personality quirks with personality traits. But each actor performs well above the material, again lending power where the script has none.

Clint is hip-deep in the Scrappy Underdog Makes Good storyline here, and the first two-thirds of Million Dollar Baby represent a moderately entertaining, if unremarkable, film. He shoots and cuts together his two (yes, two) training montages with wit and style, and it's easy to forget for a little while that you're seeing something you've seen a hundred times. And if Clint had just decided to make his cheesy sports movie, everything would have been fine. But the movie's tone is completely off-balance -- the story he's telling is supposed to be uplifting and tearjerking and all those things, but every scene is shrouded in darkness, the frames washed-out and tinted oddly green. So when the movie does aim for humor, it tends to fall rather flat.

The tone is off because Clint's goal isn't to uplift at all -- he's aiming right for the sciatic nerve, and when the third act break comes, MDB becomes an entirely different movie altogether. Without spoiling anything (as so many have done), I can tell you that something terrible happens, and certain characters must make terrible, no-win decisions. And if Eastwood had just decided to make that movie, the one about distraught people in horrible situations facing awful choices, everything would have been fine -- he's certainly talented enough to get something great (like he did in the masterful Mystic River). But after all that scrappy-underdog stuff, it feels like a sucker punch. The material isn't strong enough to support either story, and Clint is left with a mess that barely raises above the average.

It's sad to see a great director like Eastwood coasting on his past glory, sadder to see a great actor like Freeman stuck in the same hole over and over, and sadder still to see an extremely average actress like Hilary Swank getting awards and critical recognition solely on makeup and plot devices. And though the Academy will probably bestow its grand prize on Million Dollar Baby, don't be fooled: this is no champion.

Rating: **1/2

The new Zelda

Holy CRAP.

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/thelegendofzelda/screenindex.html

It's not coming for a while...and I don't have a Gamecube...but...holy CRAP.

The Films of 2004: Part Four

THE OSCARS ARE STUPID
Pithy Awards and Such for 2004

Forget the line of golden statues waiting to be handed down to The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby -- these are the real winners right here, baby. (Any similarities between winners here and winners are February 27th are purely coincidental, and almost certainly the result of a typographical error somewhere.)

Best Director: Lars Von Trier, Dogville
extremely close second: Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
extremely close third: Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill Vol. 2

Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
extremely close second: Lars Von Trier, Dogville
extremely close third: Zack Braff, Garden State

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Sideways

distant second: Steve Kloves, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Best Actress: Uma Thurman, Kill Bill Vol. 2
extremely close second: Nicole Kidman, Dogville
extremely close third: Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Actor: Paul Giamatti, Sideways
extremely close (so close it's almost a tie) second: Jamie Foxx, Ray and Collateral
extremely close third: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Clarkson, Dogville
extremely close second (again, almost a tie): Virginia Madsen, Sideways
extremely close third: Natalie Portman, Garden State
extremely close fourth: Daryl Hannah, Kill Bill Vol. 2

this one's crowded...

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Walhberg, I Heart Huckabees
extremely close second: David Carradine, Kill Bill Vol. 2
extremely close third: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
extremely close fourth: Jude Law, I Heart Huckabees
extremely close fifth: Paul Bettany, Dogville

Best Cinematography: Hero
Best Editing: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Best Production Design: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Best Original Score: I Heart Huckabees
Best Adapted Score: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Bowie! in Portuguese!)
Best Original Song: "America, Fuck Yeah!," Team America: World Police
Best Visual Effects: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Performance in a Bad Movie: Denzel Washington, The Manchurian Candidate
Worst Performance in a Good Movie: William Hurt, The Village
Worst Performance, Overall: Gwenyth Paltrow, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Worst Screenplay: The Passion of the Christ (ha! what screenplay?)
Worst Director: Ken Conran, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

commentary on the actual (stupid) Oscars are coming soon