The Worst Ever

A Monster of Marvel

I was probably the last person in America who hadn't seen Cloverfield, aside from those who refuse ever to see it. I was interested, but obstacles and distractions, compounding my usual laziness, had arisen to prevent me from watching it. Other movies, which I suspected wouldn't be in theaters for very long, were higher priorities. Cloverfield would play forever.

Well, no movie plays forever. Last night probably was my last chance to see it on the big screen, and monster movies are, of course meant to be seen on the big screen. It was playing just once more at the theater in Rutland, VT, a late showing, before finally relinquishing its spot and making way for today's new releases. I braved the sub-zero temperatures and headed over to the cinema. I'm glad I did. It's an exciting movie.

Its premise -- as I'm sure you know, a giant monster attacks New York City, and the movie consists of the footage captured by a regular guy in the midst of the disaster -- is novel, or, rather, it's a novel twist on a familiar premise. It seems strange that no one before conceived the idea of putting viewers right into the action of a big-budget spectacle by way of a handheld camera, but it's also understandable that, when producers spend millions of dollars on explosions and wreckage, they want them shown with pristine clarity. The shaky cam has an intimacy that's crucial to Cloverfield. It is a gimmick, and I'm sure that if every blockbuster adopted it, it'd become tiresome very quickly, but here it works. It removes one of the two barriers that typically prevents us from experiencing the fear and adrenaline that movie disasters are supposed to produce: It takes away the visual glossiness that, in some movies, those whose appeal lies in their distance from real life (romantic comedies, for example), is absolutely necessary but would, in Cloverfield, detract from the experience, which, because it is an action-horror movie, must be physical, like a roller coaster ride. With the handheld camera, every image we see vibrates with the physical sensations of the cameraman, his shock and dread. The other barrier is the absurdity of the whole thing, which, if the explosions are loud enough, we usually forget.

The wobbly handheld camera is commonly used in dramas about broken families to give us a sense that the filmmaker has captured the messiness of reality. In those, I usually find it ineffectual -- I suppose that, when a movie's subject matter is banal, one resents the attempt to disguise its banality with jittery camerawork -- but in Cloverfield it's sort of thrilling, and it seems a clever manner of presenting a traditional creature feature to the YouTube generation. I've heard reports that some viewers were made sick or dizzy by the tremulous picture, but I felt no such effects. Director Matt Reeves makes sure that what we see is out of focus about as often as it would be if it had actually been filmed by a novice under duress, but a few shots, as when the camera sits abandoned on the ground and everything the audience must see nevertheless lies perfectly within the frame, seem a bit too good to be true.

Moreover, the durability of the camera, which survives a helicopter crash, an explosion, and an avalanche of rocks, is a little implausible. We are also asked to believe that the footage is untouched -- if some future scholar had edited this historical document of the attack upon New York, surely he wouldn't have left in so much of the going-away party preceding the attack -- yet chunks of our protagonists' escape from the city are missing. For example, when they head to the apartment building where their friend is trapped, we see the building a few hundred yards away, and then suddenly we're inside. Are we to believe that our cameraman, Hud, had the courtesy and presence of mind, while fleeing from a monster, to shut off the camera and spare viewers the dull bits? And why does Hud's friend's home movie of a date at Coney Island, which Hud supposedly tapes over, intrude at random points upon the monster footage, as though deliberately spliced in?

Such concerns crumble, however, as Manhattan's skyline does the same. The monster, which is scarier because we rarely get a good look at it, stomps through the city like Godzilla, and, of course, conventional weapons are useless against it. It also unleashes smaller creatures that spring upon anyone in the monster's vicinity like rabid dogs. The panic of the city's inhabitants is lifelike, so pumped with fright and frenzy that it intoxicates the viewer. Cloverfield will most of all thrill all those who wonder what it was like for those at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and I suppose every American has wondered. The monster's attack upon New York's skyscrapers deliberately recalls 9/11, and it purposely dredges up old feelings of terror from that day, rerunning them this time for our pleasure. This is what horror movies do; they feed us our fears in a pleasing manner and in a safe environment. Since many of our fears now concern terroristic attacks, we must expect horror movies to address them. But because Cloverfield not only simulates 9/11's mass hysteria but roughly reflects actual images from the tragedy, some will deem it distasteful or exploitative, even repugnant. I will not argue. It is, at heart, a B-movie, unconcerned by questions of exploitation, hoping only to titillate.

As it happens, I am able to enjoy such B-movies, and this is a pretty good one, mostly in its concept, imagery, and pacing. Its script is largely mediocre. The characters, young yuppies, are not especially memorable, and a few are totally indistinguishable from one another. It is unfortunate that horror movies, so eager to make their protagonists normal people (only better-looking), stressing the idea that this could be happening to me or you, deprive themselves of interesting personalities. But Drew Goddard's script mimics the bro-lingo in which young men currently communicate accurately, sometimes to comic effect. Hud's supreme dopeyness, however, is sitcomish enough to puncture the realism that is integral to the movie. His lines have too strong a scent of comic relief, and Cloverfield is better when he keeps quiet and merely films.

The movie lasts only 85 minutes, which is just about right. Anxiety builds and builds, but before the film or the viewer burns out, it's all over. Cloverfield knows how to manipulate its audience. It's gripping in a way that no monster movie has been in a long time.

Two Shooters

I must admit that, before reading a review of In Bruges, I'd never heard of the titular city, a cozy-looking cluster of medieval churches, canals, and cobblestone streets in Belgium. Now that I've seen Martin McDonagh's debut feature, I'd like to go, but I worry the place might not be as much fun as the movie,.

In this artful tale of tourism and homicide, Irish gunmen Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are sent to Bruges after a botched job to lie low and await further instructions. Ken, the older, kinder one, loves Bruges: the architecture, the paintings, the history. Ray, on the other hand, measures a city by the quality and quantity of its pubs and has no use for Bruges's quaint charms, but Ken drags him along anyway.

Though Ray behaves like a sullen, sarcastic teenager on a class trip to a museum, all goes relatively smoothly -- he even picks up a comely blonde (Clemence Poesy) -- until two unpleasant intrusions emerge: Ray's past, which haunts him more with each day; and his boss, Harry, a frothing Ralph Fiennes, whose veins seem on the verge of bursting nearly all the time. Harry has murder on his agenda.

Farrell, whose character's sour attitude allows him to be utterly offensive and derisive, gets many of the best lines. I don't think I'd ever seen him in a comedy before, but he delivers jokes skillfully, tending to raise the pitch of his voice to accentuate the punchlines. He also lays bare his character's self-doubting, damaged side with the same sensitivity that he showed as the guilt-ridden killer in Cassandra's Dream. He's a better actor than he seemed in S.W.A.T. or Phone Booth. Ray is sometimes acerbic, sometimes clownish, sometimes sorrowful; Farrell makes good use of this multifaceted character.

Gleeson has one of those faces that you see sometimes in portly actors from the British Isles, like Timothy Spall; his features are somehow self-effacing, yet they have, too, a dignity and affability about them. His assassin is about as mild and civilized as we'll believe an assassin can be. We like him, but he doesn't have the glamor that movie killers so often possess and that asks viewers to admire them but makes them feel sick afterward for doing so. He doesn't ask for our admiration, but the watery gleam of regret in his eyes asks for our sympathy.

The director, McDonagh, is an acclaimed British playwright who won an Oscar in 2006 for his short film Six Shooter. Here, he lends his characters a gift for coarsely witty verbal invention that yields a laugh or two in nearly every exchange. Fourteen years after Pulp Fiction, you may feel you've had enough of funny hit man duos, and when one discovers that the movie is an English product, the mind quickly links it to the crime comedies of Guy Ritchie, which, entertaining as some of them are, have inspired enough film students that we needn't have real directors ripping them off as well. The early sections of In Bruges have a lighthearted vulgarity that seems merely relocated from a caper plot to a travelogue, yet there are hints -- for example, where Ritchie would insert a blaring pop song, we hear only the otherworldy quiet of the medieval city -- that the movie will develop into something else, though we thankfully cannot guess what. As wackiness ensues and a coke-sniffing dwarf, a film crew, a one-eyed stick-up kid, a Russian gun runner, and a few hookers join the mix, an unexpected seriousness ensues as well. The movie becomes surprisingly substantial, without becoming heavy-handed. Characters make moral decisions that affect the movie's outcome as much as the machinations of its odd, unpredictable plot do. McDonagh melds broad comedy with thoughtful drama, his characters' crass dialogue with Bruges's refined elegance, and brings together, without a bit of contrivance or discordance, bizarre characters and plot elements for a finale that is organic and pleasing and retains a satisfying hint of the dreamy strangeness that echoes through this hilarious, poignant movie.

I cannot think of any major playwrights, aside from Mamet, who have gone on to have highly successful careers as film directors. But McDonagh obviously has what it takes. He makes excellent use of location to create a movie that looks lovely without insisting too much upon the scenic (though the scenery is wonderful), and he manipulates the tone of his film with extraordinary deftness: He knows when to tip the balance in favor of the comical, how to readjust the scale to accommodate tenderer scenes, and when to knock the whole thing over with an outrageous, side-splitting line.

It's unfortunate that this movie has been released at a time of year that is a dead zone for intelligent movies, a time meant for junk that studios consider not prestigious enough for Oscar season and not extravagant enough for the summer. That most moviegoers don't know how to pronounce the title (I didn't) won't help business, either. But I imagine that many of those lucky enough to have seen it now have an early start on their top 10 list for 2008.

Had Any Deep Thoughts Lately?

I don't read The New Yorker very often, partly because I'm too cheap to buy magazines and the only time I see it is at my grandparents' house, partly because it's usually very boring. It's sort of remarkable, in fact, how boring it manages to be even though a lot of good writers continue to contribute. I blame the comics, which are so musty and unfunny that, I think, they suck the life out of all but the very best writing around them.

If I had been reading The New Yorker, however, I would have realized before now that Jack Handey has occasionally been writing humorous essays -- "casuals," the magazine calls them -- for some time. I stumbled upon his new piece, "How Things Even Out," yesterday.

Remember Jack Handey? I still miss his Deep Thoughts on Saturday Night Live, which would fall flat about half the time but, when they worked, would be hilarious in a nonchalantly off-kilter that was totally unique. What's sort of embarrassing is that, before yesterday, I wasn't aware that he was an actual person. I thought his name was a pseudonym for writers on SNL's staff. His essay in The New Yorker caused me to suspect that he must be real (why would old SNL writers appear in The New Yorker under a collective pen name?), and, indeed, he is. I probably should have guessed, since the sense of humor displayed in his segments of Saturday Night Live was quite unlike that which seemed to dictate the rest of the show.

"How Things Even Out" is very funny, and it has the same amiably clueless tone that Handey's Deep Thoughts had. Several of his other essays are online, too:
· "Animals All Around Us"
· "Tattoo"
· "What I'd Say to the Martians"
· "This Is No Game"
· "Ideas for Paintings"
· "My First Day in Hell"
· "My Nature Documentary"

They're not quite as good as the old New Yorker pieces by Woody Allen or Steve Martin, but they're wonderful nonetheless. With Handey writing casuals and James Wood writing book reviews, I may have to pick up The New Yorker more often -- or at least visit its website.

The only trouble is that, even online, you can't avoid the damn comics.

More Oscar Complaining

I didn't realize when I was blogging the Oscars that Brad Renfro and Roy Scheider were left out of the montage dedicated to the recently dead. According to the Canadian Press, Scheider's "death on Feb. 10 fell outside the time frame of the tribute video, which covered Feb. 1, 2007 to Jan. 31, 2008." Imposing such a time frame is silly, since, by next year, it probably won't even occur to the Academy to honor Scheider, but it does explain why the show three years ago didn't include footage of Sandra Dee (d. February 20, 2005), which, I recall, annoyed me then.

But why wasn't Renfro included?

"Unfortunately we cannot include everyone," said Leslie Unger, spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. "Our goal is to honour individuals who worked in the many professions and trades of the motion picture industry, not just actors."

Come on! I'm pretty sure the best boy from Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter was in there, yet you couldn't fit in one of the three people in the movie business who died since last year's awards and whose names we actually know? I'm not sure why this seems to matter at all, but ever since Sandra Dee's exclusion, the In Memoriam clip show has been a touchy subject for me, though it undeniably remains one of the pleasures of the Oscars' broadcast.

In addition, I need to mention that if you didn't see Saturday Night Live's recent parody of There Will Be Blood (with spoofs of No Country for Old Men and Juno mixed in), you need to check it out. I don't watch SNL very frequently anymore, but I happened to catch it last week, and Bill Hader's impression of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview was perfect.

Finally, I'd like to follow-up on an earlier post about the Razzies. The winners were announced on Saturday; I Know Who Killed Me beat out Norbit for the big prize. I haven't seen Norbit, but I am confident nonetheless that the judges made the right choice.

Maybe the Oscars should have paid tribute to Lindsay Lohan's acting career in their In Memoriam segment, too.

The Worst Oscars Ever

The only reason to watch the Oscars is to enjoy getting angry when the Academy makes all the wrong picks. When, on occasion, they make what you think is correct decision, it's actually disconcerting -- you worry you've misjudged the movie. But here I am, watching anyway. After all, it's the Super Bowl of Hollywood, and even though it should be meaningless, a win at the Oscars is always the biggest moment in an actor's or director's career. Since I'll be spending eight hours on this wonderful cultural event, I may as well make a blog entry out of it. I'll be recording my observations as I watch, typing out the stuff that I'd otherwise have to yell at the screen -- because, you know, the smart-ass comments that people yell at TV screens need to be preserved in writing.

8:00 - The official red carpet show has begun on ABC. When you find yourself watching this, you have to come to terms with the fact that, in spite of all its phoniness, pretension, and idiocy, you love Hollywood: supposedly beautiful people looking ridiculous, supposedly fascinating people being totally uninteresting. And Regis Philbin is here!

8:02 - Regis Philbin is already talking about Notre Dame's sports teams. This must be a record!

8:04 - Marion Cotillard is being interviewed. Is she just French, or is she retarded also?

8:08 - The clips and interviews are coming fast and furious now. George Clooney, John Travolta, Laura Linney, and Javier Bardem have all been grabbed and disposed of already. They talk for about three seconds each, which, actually, may be just right. ABC hasn't even had time to tell us who the black woman interviewing people along with Regis is.

8:09 - Miley Cyrus gushes, "It's pretty great to finally be here on the red carpet at the Oscars!" Finally? You're fifteen. And I don't know why you're here anyway. Is Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour a late nominee for Best Documentary?

8:10 - How come Regis doesn't break out his old "Is that your final answer?" catchphrase in any of his interviews? It was so played out back in 2000 that, now, I think it would really sound fresh again.

8:12 - "The lovable Mickey Rooney" looks more like a troll than ever. I can't believe he even got an invitation.

8:14 - Standing behind Helen Mirren is a blocky, stern-faced white man sporting a flat-top. I kid you not: a flat-top, like Patrick Ewing in the '90s. Who is this man?

8:15 - Daniel Day-Lewis wears two gold hoop earrings. LOL. Does he have a part in the next Pirates of the Caribbean sequel?

8:19 - Interviewing teenagers, a guy and a girl, who won tickets to the Oscars, Regis somehow forces them to proclaim themselves fans of Miley Cyrus. They will never live this down. Why is Regis bringing her up again, anyhow?

8:22 - Do we really need a recap of what Juno is about just because they're interviewing Ellen Page? Is there anyone who doesn't know by now?

8:27 - Just as though he were giving a too long acceptance speech, Regis is still talking as the credits roll, the music plays, and ABC transitions from the red carpet broadcast to the big show.

8:28 - Michael Bay has found a way to make an appearance in the Oscars telecast despite being effectually banned from the ceremony due to having directed Bad Boys II (which I liked, by the way). He's in a commercial. I don't know what it's for, but there are a lot of explosions. It's a lot like one of his movies, actually: It's impossible to tell what the point is, but it doesn't seem to matter.

8:29 - The show hasn't even started, and I'm already exhausted.

8:31 - A fancy CGI sequence, featuring the De Loreon from Back to the Future, a robot from Transformers, and Cary Grant from North by Northwest, opens the show. It's kind of cool.

8:32 - Here's Jon Stewart! Why didn't they get this guy to host the show back in 2003 when he seemed funny and relevant? Remember when you watched The Daily Show? Apparently the Academy still does.

8:35 - Stewart just made a reference to Dorothy Hamill. Nobody knows who you're talking about, old man.

8:36 - Cut to Jack Nicholson jawing at the host. We can't hear what he's saying, and he looks terrifying. This is one of Oscar's greatest traditions. When Jack dies, they're going to prop up his corpse in the front row and attach marionette strings to his lips.

8:39 - Uh-oh. Here come the political jokes. I guess this is what Stewart is here for, right?

8:40 - Spike Lee is sitting next to Wesley Snipes. Do they just put the black people next to each other, or are they planning Jungle Fever 2? Which would be worse?

8:42 - The first category, presented by Jennifer Garner, is Best Costume Design. It's going to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I'm calling it.

8:43 - Duh! A British period picture with big puffy dresses can't miss in Best Costume Design. Apparently it's really, really hard to make the dresses all puffy like that.

8:48 - George Clooney is here to present the first clip show. That I generally think the old clips are the best part of the show must mean that I'm getting old. Unfortunately, this one is just clips of old Oscar telecasts, and, worst of all, they're playing "My Heart Will Go On." You'd think they'd be hoping we've forgotten that they actually gave an award to Celine Dion for recording that song.

8:52- Anne Hathaway, presenting Best Animated Feature, is paler than Keith Van Horn. She says that 800 billion people are watching tonight's Oscars. Wow!

8:53 - I didn't see any of the nominees for this category. Because cartoons are for children. You losers. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Ratatouille is fun for adults, too.

8:55 - Katharine Heigl is crying just because she's been asked to present one of the trophies. Please don't ever let this girl win anything. She'd slobber like Brett Favre at the end of football season.

8:57 - One of the La Vie en Rose's makeup artists is the first lazy-eyed winner since Forest Whitaker. Actually, Whitaker won only a year ago. Who would've guessed we'd see another one so soon?

9:00 - Amy Adams sings a song from Enchanted. It now seems implausible that I actually liked this girl in Junebug. She has the frigid, brittle stage smile of my elementary school music teacher. It gives me the chills. And we still have to listen to two more songs from Enchanted.

9:06 - Yes! The Rock is here! You can introduce him as "Dwayne Johnson" all you want, Stewart, but we know who he is. I hope he grabs the trophy for Best Visual Effects and takes it home with him. If he doesn't, it better go to Transformers.

9:08 - The Golden Compass? Boo! One of the special effects artists thanks his "handsome son Alex." Cut to goofy-looking Alex in the crowd.

9:11 - We're moving right along here. Cate Blanchett is presenting Best Art Direction. We used to have a semi-interesting category like Best Supporting Actor to start with, didn't we? Sweeney Todd's Francesca Lo Schiavo, one of the winners, looks like the Italian Joan Rivers.

9:14 - Another clip show, again comprised solely of earlier Oscar telecasts -- specifically, the Best Supporting Actors' big moments. I guess we're getting that category now after all. Most of clip show is devoted to the acceptance speech by Cuba Gooding Jr., another victor whom I thought the Academy would be hoping we've forgotten.

9:18 - Jennifer Hudson, last year's Best Supporting Actress, presents the award to Javier Bardem of No Country for Old Men. She pronounces his name "Harvey-er." He gives half his acceptance speech in Spanish. You know the audience loves it. He then kisses his mom on the lips with just a little too much zeal, adding yet another layer to the creepiness of Anton Chigurh.

9:21 - Oscar is working in conjunction with Dove in a contest in which we can vote for which of two commercials for Dove's body oil we think is best. Now we know where the real competition is tonight! Can you feel the tension?

9:24 - "Please welcome the star of August Rush, Keri Russell!" What the hell is August Rush? She says some crap about inspiring somebody to dream. Yeah, yeah. Stop pulling our chain, Felicity. Nobody believes this is a real movie. But we're going to hear a song from it anyway.

9:26 - It's an earnest song about maintaining hope in an impoverished black community (or something along those lines). The screechy little girl performing would get booed off the stage at the Apollo.

9:28 - I like Owen Wilson, and he was technically nominated for Best Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums, but introducing him as "Oscar nominee Owen Wilson" just sounds wrong. He's presenting Best Live Action Short Film. He informs us that Le Mozart des pickpockets, the winner, actually translates to The Mozart of Pickpockets. No kidding. And we get another acceptance speech from a guy who can't speak English. This is no fun.

9:30 - How is Jerry Seinfeld still promoting Bee Movie? It isn't nominated, and it's not in theaters anymore. Move on, Jerry.

9:33 - Peter and the Wolf wins Best Animated Short Film. The announcer screws up director Suzie Templeton's name, which, after getting all these foreign names right, seems kind of ironic. Anyway, the victory is nice for these filmmakers, I guess, but I wonder if these people know that nobody saw their movie.

9:37 - Alan Arkin presents Best Supporting Actress to Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton. It's funny; for years I couldn't keep her and fellow nominee Cate Blanchett straight. Tonight, I really wanted both to lose, but Tilda really wasn't so bad in Michael Clayton, so if it had to be one of them, I'm glad it was her. Thanking costar George Clooney, she pokes fun at him for Batman & Robin, which I think means she's qualified to write a blog.

9:40 - For a moment, it seems that the ever boring Sidney Poitier is actually saying something interesting. "There is no honor in the motion picture business," he says as he reminisces about his Oscar win . . . before adding, "that exemplifies all the things that one could possibly reach for," which, come to think of it, doesn't change the meaning of his statement at all.

9:44 - Jessica Alba reveals that she hosted the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards. Is it for the comic effect that the Academy always chooses a hot actress for these duties instead of someone who knows about these matters, or is it to give the nerds at the Scientific and Technical Awards a chance to talk to an attractive woman that they'd otherwise never have?

9:47 - Does it seem a slap in the face to Josh Brolin and James McAvoy, who know that they are the only people involved in No Country for Old Men and Atonement who aren't nominated, when they are called upon to present Best Adapted Screenplay?

9:48 - Joel and Ethan Coen win, of course, and the novelist behind their source material, Cormac McCarthy, is in the audience, with a creepy-looking boy (his son, I hope) with his head on his shoulder. Between this and Oprah, is McCarthy's reputation as a reclusive tough-guy writer ruined? I think so.

9:50 - Sid Ganis, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (I've never heard of him either), explains how voters pick the nominees and winners of the Oscars, so now we know exactly how they go about making their boneheaded choices every year.

9:53 - Miley Cyrus introduces another song from Enchanted. I just noticed that she looks like a miniature Sam Cassell.

9:55 - Miley does not appear to be singing the song. This sucks.

10:02 - Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill are here to present Best Sound Editing. There's nothing like the Oscars for rendering hip, edgy funnymen into tiresome, watered-down Bob Hopes.

10:06 - Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing both go to The Bourne Ultimatum, respectively, but the real winners are the categories themselves, for Least Exciting Categories of the Night. Meanwhile, sound mixer Kevin O'Connell of Transformers, who has been nominated twenty times, loses for the twentieth time.

10:10 - Forest Whitaker, presenting Best Actress, somehow has the Waspiest accent of the night. Does he always talk like this? And are we already at Best Actress? This is great!

10:13 - Marion Cotillard wins! She's the first real surprise of the night. I hadn't even heard of her until she was nominated. I'm just glad Ellen Page didn't win. An incoherent Cotillard twice praises somebody (I'm not sure whom) for "rock[ing] my life." Sweet. I know Laura Linney is glad she didn't win, or else critics wouldn't be able to call her underrated all the time.

10:17 - Jon Stewart is playing tennis on the Wii. He's so lovably wacky!

10:19 - Colin Farrell introduces the song "Falling Slowly" from Once, presumably because both he and the movie are Irish.

10:23 - Jack Nicholson, presenting a tribute to the various winners of Best Picture throughout the Academy's history, says, "Movies inspire us, they challenge us, and despite our differences, they touch the common humanity in all of us." By inserting an inappropriate laugh midway through his speech, he manages to make even this innocuous statement seem creepily lascivious.

10:26 - I forgot how many bad movies won Best Picture. Mrs. Miniver? Jesus.

10:28 - Somehow, when listing the nominees for Best Film Editing, the Academy manages to find a picture for Roderick Jaynes, a pseudonym for the Coen brothers.

10:30 - I think The Bourne Ultimatum now leads all movies in Oscar wins tonight. I totally knew that would happen.

10:32 - According to Nicole Kidman, tonight's honorary Oscar recipient, Robert Boyle, set "the standard of excellence to which all those who follow in his footsteps aspire." An art director? I thought this category existed solely to appease film geeks by honoring the second-rate auteurs who would otherwise never get a trophy from the Academy. The last time Boyle was nominated was in 1977, so it must have been a nice surprise when they called him back here.

10:37 - How long will they let this old man ramble before the orchestra kicks him off the stage? Is it that not allowed for these lifetime achievement types?

10:42 - Penelope Cruz is presenting Best Foreign Language Film because, you know, she's foreign. I haven't seen any of the nominees. From the clips, they all look kind of lame, except for Mongol, which appears to star Pat Morita as Genghis Khan.

10:44 - The Counterfeiters of Austria wins. No relation to Andre Gide's novel. It turns out it's about "the Nazis' crimes." Who would've guessed that a movie about the Nazis' crimes would win?

10:46 - Another song from Enchanted? Awesome! Couldn't they just tell those interested to see the movie?

10:49 - John Travolta presents Best Original Song to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of Once. So, basically, we listened to fifteen minutes of Enchanted for nothing. Glen is so Irish that he can't say th. "Tanks!" he exclaims.

10:54 - The commercials include the trailer for a TV version of A Raisin in the Sun starring Diddy and John Stamos. Can they just discard the current nominees and give Best Picture to this movie?

10:57 - It turns out Markéta Irglová didn't get a chance to talk while Glen Hansard accepted their award, so Stewart has brought her back out. Hollywood stars smile condescendingly at the Irish girl as she babbles ardently about those who "dare to dream." I love these inspirational moments.

10:59 - Cameron Diaz is presenting the award for cinematography, because she knows about these things.

11:00 - There Will Be Blood gets its first win! Cinematographer Robert Elswit says it really belongs "to Paul," and the Academy's cameraman seems to think he may mean supporting actor Paul Dano.

11:04 - I like the In Memoriam clips. It turns out that the stuntman who did the motorcycle jump in The Great Escape is dead. Rest in peace.

11:08 - Breathless Amy Adams is back to present Best Original Score. I dislike her more and more. I hope the award goes to 3:10 to Yuma because otherwise it won't win anything.

11:10 - Composer Dario Marianelli of Atonement wins. They cut to the movie's cast, and little Briony looks even weirder here than she did in the movie. She's like the female Haley Joel Osment, circa 1999.

11:12 - The Academy has decided to show its patriotism by patronizing the troops overseas, allowing them to present a category that really no one cares about, Best Short Documentary. One of the soldiers proclaims, "We watch a ton of movies over here, and we love them all." All of them? Really? Anyway, it sounds like they're having a pretty jolly time in Iraq after all. Maybe we really should stay there for a thousand years, McCain.

11:13 - The winner, Freeheld, illuminates the prejudices faced by same-sex couples, which its director, Cynthia Wade, is sure to note that she doesn't face, because she's totally not gay.

11:17 - The Academy knows not to let Michael Moore on stage again. Best Feature Documentary goes to Taxi to the Dark Side, which criticizes the torture practices of America's military in the Middle East. No wonder they had the troops present the award for the short subjects.

11:23 - Jon Stewart jokes that the next presenter, Harrison Ford, "is either an internationally acclaimed movie star or an auto dealership." Because he's named Ford. You know, like the car company. Ha!

11:25 - Diablo Cody wins Best Original Screenplay for Juno. We have a new frontrunner for the worst pick of the night.

11:29 - We're seeing clips of Marlon Brando and John Wayne accepting their trophies for Best Actor, so we know another big award is coming up! Presenter Helen Mirren lists the various "facets of the rainbow of human behavior reflected by the performances" nominated for Best Actor tonight. Who but the Oscars' writers can come up with such phrases? Thank God the strike is over.

11:34 - Daniel Day-Lewis wins. No surprise there. To him, it seems that his performance (or the trophy?) "sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad, beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson." Day-Lewis's dad was Britain's Poet Laureate, you know.

11:42 - Here comes Martin Scorsese with the envelope containing the identity of the winner of the trophy for Best Director. Let's go, Paul Thomas Anderson!

11:43 - Joel and Ethan Coen win. They're really good, and I love some of their movies, but this kind of sucks. I knew they'd get it, though.

11:45 - Denzel Washington is presenting Best Picture. Which movie is going to win the big prize, No Country for Old Men or No Country for Old Men?

11:46 - No Country for Old Men wins. I really don't like the choice, but I guess it's actually still the best Best Picture winner in a while. Weird.

11:50 - That's a wrap! The show wasn't so long after all. What's really endless is this play-by-play. My apologies.

99

I would like to note that, although my next entry will be my 100th, I won't waste your time by celebrating that milestone. Instead, tonight's/tomorrow's post will be a detailed recap of the Academy Awards. If you don't feel like viewing all eight hours of the ceremony, come here afterward to find out who won, who should have won, and which acceptance speeches were the most hilariously moronic. I'll be recording my impressions as I watch, so it'll almost be a live blog, except, once the show has ended, before publishing my entry, I'll take the time to edit it, so it won't be shitty like all the live blogs out there.

Hello Again

I had an excellent vacation.

I'd like to do a quick recap of the various things that happened in the worlds of literature and film while I was gone, before I get to work on some reviews and other writings:

· French novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet died on Monday. His AP obituary states that, as one of the fathers of the nouveau roman, he "tossed aside literary conventions like plot and character development, narrative and chronology, chapters and punctuation." I guess somebody had to do it. I've read only one of his novels, The Erasers, his first published, which I found pretty dull. I've always wanted to see Last Year at Marienbad, for which Robbe-Grillet served as screenwriter, but it hasn't been released on DVD in the United States. One of the movies he directed, The Beautiful Prisoner, is in my Netflix queue. Maybe I'll push it up to the top.

In the Telegraph, Tim Martin says that Robbe-Grillet's last novel was repulsive tripe, which, for a formerly trailblazing French novelist in his eighties, seems about par for the course. In the Guardian, Gilbert Adair regrets that today's most acclaimed novelists, such as Ian McEwan and Zadie Smith, write conventional narratives rather than following Robbe-Grillet's example of groundbreaking, experimental writing. I think they should follow Robbe-Grillet's example by dying this week.

I was only kidding. Jeez!

· Noted film critic Baron Davis offered his picks for some of the Oscar categories.

· Paper Cuts pointed out that there exists a dating site solely for admirers of Ayn Rand. Called the Atlasphere, it is designed for those to whom the tiny chance that one might actually encounter a nice person on Match.com seems too much to risk.

· Just when we thought Hayden Christensen was finished, his new movie Jumper debuted at #1 at the box office. Ugh. What's worse is that I kind of want to see it. 

· I discovered that there is a poet from Philadelphia named Major Jackson, who, with his first name, seems to have solved the problem of how to be a poet without having people think you're a sissified intellectual.

· Despite its idiotic name, Blu-ray beat HD DVD. Is it finally time for me to upgrade from VHS?

Another Hiatus

I'm going on a trip tomorrow, and I'm not sure I'd have time to blog much while away even if I tried.

So I'm not going to try. The Worst Ever is on vacation until Saturday, February 23. I promise that, this time, I'll come back with renewed creativity and diligence, unlike the last time when I returned from a break and proceeded to post mostly filler.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Back in Business

Yeah, so the writers' strike has ended.

As the great Derrick Coleman once said, whoop-de-damn-do.

I Sure As Heckfire Remember You

Groundhog Day opened in theaters in the United States fifteen years ago today. Two weeks ago, it was rereleased on DVD as a "Special 15th Anniversary Edition." Bill Murray looks a little weird on the cover.

The movie, however, really is one of the best, a wonderful concoction of verbal wit, inventive storytelling, old-fashioned edification, and acerbic cynicism. Comedy nearly always works best when its spirit is anarchic and its tone irreverent, and that's why it's pretty amazing that a movie as didactic as Groundhog Day is so funny. Much of the comedy is derived from the movie's clever premise. I like time loop stories, just as I like time travel stories, because I enjoy the disconnect between the person who sees that everything that is happening has already happened and will forever continue to happen and those who pursue their usual errands and activities without the time traveler's consciousness of their cosmic insignificance or significance. It's an effective way of communicating a feeling that I think a lot of us have on occasion, even though, when we think we have a higher level of awareness than those around us, it probably isn't true. In Groundhog Day, the disconnect is played for comedy, and it works extremely well: Ned Ryerson is ridiculous the first time around, but his ridiculousness increases exponentially each time we see him.

Bill Murray, as the weatherman Phil, seems, of course, even more responsible for Groundhog Day's sense of humor. His caustic, sarcastic dialogue, which nearly always sounds improvised, not only gets a lot of laughs but also counterbalances the movie's spiritually uplifting strain. Because Groundhog Day allows its mean-spirited protagonist to be so entertaining, it doesn't feel like the movie is telling us to be good. And because, at the end of the movie, he's entertaining in exactly the same way in which he was entertaining at the start, his moral transformation is not as tritely obvious as one might expect. But it's this acknowledgment -- that, to become a better person, one does not have to become a boring person -- that makes Groundhog Day's moral instruction easy to swallow. It is essential, too, that the lesson is not injected into a story that seems it should have been amoral. Here, the plot reflects message: Nothing will change until you change. Even before Phil becomes trapped in Punxsutawney, it's clear that his negativity closes him off from life's multifariousness (he has no interest in anyone or anything, approaching everything with the same casual scorn). Only when he has learned to embrace the joys and sorrows of life and the people who inhabit it is he set free, both literally and figuratively. And this sounds corny, but because the moralizing is never explicit and never interferes with the comedy, the movie is better for it. It's that rare movie that asks the viewer to be a better person and doesn't produce the opposite effect. As a result, it reaches us on a level more personal than other comedies, which I suppose is why, after fifteen years, it remains one of the most beloved movies.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner has also been rereleased on DVD with a 40th Anniversary Edition, which, if nothing else, will, with its blunt preachiness, show by contrast just how delicate a parable Groundhog Day really is.