The Worst Ever

A Few Quick Links

• Philip Roth has two more novels coming fairly soon!

• Twitter's Maya Angelou is actually a 20-year-old guy. At least we still have Shaq.

• Patton Oswalt wants to be poet laureate.

Wood's Canon

On Tuesday, The Elegant Variation dug up a list compiled a decade and a half ago by James Wood of the best postwar books from the United States and Great Britain. The list, printed in the Guardian when Wood was in his late 20s, was not available online until now. Apparently, The Elegant Variation has a PDF of the original article but hasn't uploaded it, possibly to avoid getting in trouble, but they've transcribed Wood's list and summarized his introduction:

Back in 1994, prompted by Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, James Wood presented Guardian readers with his own list of the best British and American writing since 1945.  (He found Bloom a "fine, if prejudiced, reader of poetry, but an unreliable reader of prose.")  The list was offered as a mild corrective, an exercise Wood considered "amusing."  He was careful with his own caveats and omissions - he pled an "ignorance of the theatre" and realized that by omitting the category, he was overlooking the likes of Harold Pinter.  He also excluded journalism other than essays and book reviews.  And, finally, he cut the whole thing off around 1985 - unless "keeping to it would have meant omitting a writer's best work so far."  The list is especially interesting given that Wood says he sough to "avoid the 'representative', 'important' or 'influential' and chosen, instead, books which I like, which seemed to me deep and beautiful, which aerate the soul and abrase the conscience ... "

No, I don't know what it means to "abrase the conscience," either.

What's intriguing about the list is not only its eccentricity -- Wood's picks are not limited to the award-winners and classics -- but that it's populated to a surprising degree by authors whom I (and probably everyone else) thought Wood disliked. I've read only uncomplimentary reviews of John Updike from Wood, but here he chooses four of Updike's books as representatives of the very best postwar writing. Only Saul Bellow has as many selections; no one has more.

I recall, also, a few awfully negative comments about Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison, but here are White Noise, Sula, and Beloved. Thomas Pynchon, one of the reviled "hysterical realists," makes two appearances. One wonders if Wood's taste has changed over the years or if his readers have been too eager to construct an overriding aesthetic dogma from his critiques of individual titles. His ideal authors seem to be Chekhov and Flaubert, but perhaps he has a greater appreciation also for postmodernism and metafiction (Barth and Barthelme show up here) than one is able to deduce merely by reading his reviews when they appear online, as I do.

Late Oscar Postgame

• Film Junk has solved the extremely pressing mystery of Philip Seymour Hoffman's skull cap.

• Cinematical thinks Don LaFontaine was snubbed. I agree.

• Kate Winslet still has a really lousy batting average.

• Even LOL Jocks made an Oscar post.

My Top Ten

A few of you may remember that, in December, I mentioned that I might compile a list of my 10 favorite movies of 2008, as many other critics already had. It took me a long time to see all the films I wanted to watch, but I've finally made the list. It appears in this week's Mountain Times, but for quick reference, I'll include it here, too:

1. In Bruges
2. The Dark Knight
3. Redbelt
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Iron Man
6. Tropic Thunder
7. Doubt
8. Hamlet 2
9. The Fall
10. Lakeview Terrace

Read the article here. Hit the refresh button if it doesn't work.

Or click on the movies' titles above to access my full-length reviews. Because I didn't see The Fall in theaters, I didn't review it -- I discuss nearly every new release I watch, but I don't have time to address every DVD. But I may decide to devote an entry to The Fall in the coming days; upon reflection, I think it deserves it.

Mardi Gras!

Here are pictures of Val Kilmer, who apparently was the king of one of the parades in New Orleans:

One day I will own that outfit.

Second Annual Oscar Blog

Here we go again. This year I don't even have a movie to root for in the major categories, as I did in 2008 with There Will Be Blood. I don't think any of tonight's nominees are quite as good, and Slumdog Millionaire doesn't really need my support, since it's going to win everything anyway. Still, this should be fun.

8:00 - Buckle up, kids. Barbara Walters has finished interviewing those nice Jonas Brothers whom her grandchildren like so much, so ABC has turned it over to people named Tim Gunn and Robin Roberts (who?). As for me, I'm not watching in HD this year, and the TV is older than I am, and the picture's so blurry that I'm worried I won't be able to make any jokes about anyone on the red carpet.

8:01 - I'm bored already.

8:03 - Amy Adams is "a beacon for fashion, and fashion salutes" her. Awesome.

8:04 - Matthew Broderick has blond highlights. Please, somebody, save Ferris.

8:05 - "Richard Nixon couldn't be here tonight," but we do have Frank Langella! Richard Nixon is dead, by the way. Has been dead for 15 years. Probably didn't like movies much even when he was alive.

8:06 - The freeze-frame on Miley Cyrus going into the commercial will give me nightmares.

8:10 - No one from Slumdog Millionaire is a big enough star to get a solo interview, so the whole cast has to crowd up to the mic together.

8:11 - If you're wondering who Mickey Rourke is wearing tonight, it's probably a dead hooker.

8:12 - Hey, Vanessa Hudgens, I've seen you naked.

8:13 - With a pompous shrug, Zac Efron mentions that Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire is "a great kid." How demeaning is it to be called a "kid" by Zac Efron?

8:15 - More Miley. Are this year's Oscars sponsored by Tiger Beat magazine? She says she hopes she'll be here again next year to get an award for her upcoming film. You heard it here first -- Hannah Montana: The Movie is a contender for 2010.

8:19 - Meryl Streep has an attractive, much younger woman as her date. Sweet!

8:20 - Oh, wait, it turns out that she's Streep's daughter. Huh. I knew she wasn't cool enough to be a lesbian.

8:21 - I want to know who has a tinier face, Penelope Cruz or Anne Hathaway. Can we please get them side-by-side?

8:22 - Richard Jenkins's pockmarks are looking fresh tonight.

8:23 - "Marisa Tomei, Mickey Rourke says he loves seeing you with your clothes off. I love seeing you with your clothes on!" Not because your dress is nice. I'm just really, really gay.

8:25 - The musical director for the Oscars looks exactly like Vince Vaughn. These songs are going to be so money.

8:30 - The awards are starting! Let's hand these things out quickly and get out of here in time to catch the second half of the Cavaliers-Pistons game.

8:32 - Fuck, Hugh is singing and dancing already. After this, will anyone be able to see him in Wolverine without laughing?

8:36 - I can feel my heterosexuality ebbing away as I watch this.

8:38 - A standing ovation for the opening number. I know, I'm really glad it's over too.

8:41 - First montage! It took them roughly five minutes to open the curtain. What a gaffe! Somebody will never work in this town again. Have a good life, Mr. Failure.

8:43 - The five least attractive women in the room -- including Whoopi Goldberg, who as a result of Doubt gets to make a Sister Act reference -- are presenting the trophy for Best Supporting Actress.

8:47 - Penelope Cruz is the night's first winner! She says that, as a child in Spain, she always stayed up late to watch the Academy Awards. Pretty impressive, since I can't imagine the Oscars ever ended before six a.m. over there.

8:49 - That wasn't Spanish. That was gibberish. I'm calling it.

8:50 - Well, that was fun. Only 236 categories to go!

8:54 - Steve Martin and Tina Fey are presenting. Remember when they used to have comedians host the Oscars? You know, like, people with jokes. Who don't just prance around.

8:55 - Here comes Best Original Screenplay. It's weird that, even though the Oscars don't really mean anything, I still badly want deserving parties to win. Let's go, In Bruges!

8:57 - I knew it would never happen. You're such jerks, Hollywood. Congratulations, Milk.

8:59 - Are they showing us the actual screenplays? If so, why don't the lines on the page match the lines spoken by the actors? Do actors really just get lines wrong all the time?

9:01 - Simon Beaufoy gets Best Adapted Screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire. I guess this means Steve Martin has to leave now.

9:04 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes an appearance in the montage of this year's animated features. If we must be reminded of that film, why not save Star Wars for the In Memorium segment?

9:06 - WALL-E wins for Best Animated Feature. A lot of surprises so far. Apparently, it's about "a character who struggles so tenaciously to see beauty in everything around him." And you thought it was about a robot who eats garbage.

9:09 - The guy who won Best Animated Short for La maison en petits cubes is definitely not French.

9:16 - Sarah Jessica Parker and Daniel Craig provide the nominees for Best Art Direction. Finally, we've come to the categories we really care about!

9:18 - OK, Benjamin Button, you can have Best Art Direction, as long as you still know that nobody likes you.

9:20 - The Duchess takes Best Costume Design, the third film in a row (after Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Marie Antoinette) to win this category simply by including a lot of those old-fashioned puffy dresses that are worn in movies by European royalty. No one even saw The Duchess. But those dresses!

9:24 - Another win for Benjamin Button, for a category I already can't remember. Best Visual Makeup Effects Editing?

9:25 - I haven't heard of either of these presenters -- one of them a girl from Mamma Mia!, the other a boy from Twilight. The Academy is playing to the coveted demographic that both watches the Disney Channel and cares about awards for sound effects.

9:27 - Another montage, this one devoted to cinematic romance in 2008, with more clips from movies not good enough to be nominated, including a High School Musical sequel. There is no love more touching than that between android teenagers engineered by an evil corporation.

9:32 - Ben Stiller does a pretty good Joaquin Phoenix impression, complete with drug-addict sunglasses, mountain-man beard, and chewing gum. He wanders off midway through Natalie Portman's introductory speech about cinematography. Really, can you blame him?

9:35 - The cinematographer Roger Deakins loses for the eighth time at the Oscars. Someone named Anthony Dod Mantle wins on his first nomination for Slumdog Millionaire. Life just isn't fair, even in Hollywood.

9:39 - Jessica Biel reveals that she hosted the Scientific and Technical Awards this year, continuing the "hot women named Jessica who probably don't care much about anything scientific or technical" tradition of hosting that Jessica Alba began last year.

9:43 - A montage of comedies from 2008, presided over by Seth Rogen and James Franco in a short film directed by Judd Apatow. If you thought we couldn't go lower than High School Musical 3, please meet You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

9:47 - Who thought it was a good idea to try to have the guys from Pineapple Express try to pronounce Spielzeugland, the Best Short Film, or Jochen Alexander Freydank, its director?

9:52 - More singing and dancing by Hugh Jackman. I bet Hugh Grant wouldn't have let this happen.

9:53 - Beyonce joins in for this number, so my heterosexuality may remain intact this time. Probably not, though.

10:02 - Five former winners of Best Supporting Actor get to present the award tonight. Hey, remember how Cuba Gooding Jr. has an Oscar?

10:07 - Heath Ledger wins, and he doesn't even bother to show up to collect the award.

10:08 - No, I'm not deleting that last joke.

10:10 - Kate Winslet, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Adrien Brody, and Anne Hathaway all have mustered tears. If only there were an award for Best Performance by an Audience Member at the Oscars!

10:12 - Documentaries! Such important work. I didn't see a single one.

10:13 - Holy shit, Bill Maher, you self-important fuck -- if your documentary had even been nominated, I would have had to boycott this telecast. Also, is your jacket supposed to be waterproof or something?

10:17 - Man on Wire and Smile Pinki win Best Documentary and Best Short Documentary, respectively. Olive Oyl is on hand to collect the trophy for the latter.

10:23 - A special effects montage, featuring movies that had too darn many special effects to be nominated for any awards.

10:29 - Flubbing a line, Will Smith makes a "Boom goes the dynamite!" reference. And you wonder why I love this man. Also, Benjamin Button and The Dark Knight just won some prizes for their visual effects and sound editing.

10:30 - Slumdog Millionaire, your sound was mixed like a fine cocktail.

10:31 - Danny Boyle and Dev Patel are way too excited about this award. Seriously, nobody gives a shit about this.

10:34 - Will Smith is still out there. They're killing four birds with one stone. Film editing is next.

10:35 - More Slumdog Millionaire. For some reason, Heath Ledger's dad is back to collect the award.

10:41 - It's nice that Eddie Murphy managed to make it all the way to the Oscars without putting on a fat suit.

10:42 - Jerry Lewis, who is going to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, goes cross-eyed in every hilarious clip from this montage. Apparently that gag never got old in the 1950s. And then I guess it got really, really old.

10:46 - I'm kind of glad I don't have to look at Jerry Lewis in HD.

10:47 - Jerry has the grace not to mention how much he hated Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor remakes.

10:53 - I was about to complain about the medley of film scores, and then Zac Efron showed up. More film scores, please.

10:54 - Another win for Slumdog Millionaire, and we're moving on to Best Original Song. "If the score is the narrative of the movie, then the song is its punctuation," says Mr. Efron. The sheer inanity of lines like that is one of the main reasons I watch the Oscars.

10:56 - The guy who composed the score for Slumdog Millionaire is singing now. Yeah, what?

10:59 - These songs are pretty underwhelming. Can we just give this award to Lil Wayne?

11:01 - "Jive Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire wins, which means that composer/singer A.R. Rahman gets to be on stage some more. We should just have him host next time.

11:06 - The nominees for Best Foreign-Language Film are the only ones that get synopses from the presenters. Because nobody has seen them. Unfortunately, the descriptions by Liam Neeson and Freida Pinto don't sync with the images on the screen. Someone else will never work in this town again.

11:09 - The Academy's foreign films usually aren't very good, but they do often make for excellent acceptance speeches. Thank you, Mr. Shouting Man from Okuribito.

11:14 - A lot of good deaths in 2008.

11:18 - I've just looked up Sid Ganis. I didn't know that the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was also the producer of Big Daddy, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and Mr. Deeds. No wonder the Academy has such awful taste in movies.

11:21 - Danny Boyle is our Best Director. I know this is going to kill you in your Oscar pool.

11:26 - Five former Best Actresses are here to hand off the trophy to tonight's Best Actress. I guess they're doing this for all the acting awards. I didn't catch on till now.

11:28 - Marion Cotillard looks like she's about to break into a giggling fit. She was the same way last year. Is she high all the time, or what?

11:30 - Sophia Loren has turned into the Italian Cruella de Vil.

11:32 - The sixth time is the charm for Kate Winslet. Hey, weren't you only a supporting actress in The Reader at the Golden Globes?

11:41 - Anthony Hopkins, one of the five presenters for Best Actor, is really, really skinny now. He must not have eaten anyone in years.

11:43 - Sean Penn wins again. At least it wasn't for a horrible performance this time. Let's see how long he can manage on stage without going political.

11:44 - He's gone political! Yes to Obama, no to Proposition 8. Interesting.

11:47 - Steven Spielberg is here to find out why Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't nominated for Best Picture. Just because it was horrible?

11:51 - The montage for Best Picture includes clips from many old movies that did not win Best Picture.

11:53 - Oh my God, The Reader won! Just kidding. Slumdog Millionaire. Duh.

11:54 - Pretty much the whole cast is on stage. I guess they always travel in a pack. I wish they'd let the six-year-old in the background give the acceptance speech.

11:56 - We're out of here before midnight. Sweet. Have a good night, and try not to feel too bad for Slumdog Millionaire for its devastating defeat in Sound Editing.

Oscar Pregame Post

I'd just like to announce that, due to last year's widespread acclaim and demand for more, I'll once again be watching the Academy Awards and writing a play-by-play for the blog. I'm sure you're all relieved that now you don't have to subject yourself to Hollywood's gruesomely glamorous pageantry and self-congratulation tonight.

Unlike everyone else, I won't be live-blogging, since I wouldn't expect any of my readers to hang around here hitting the refresh button all night. Check here after midnight to find out the winners and discover what you missed.

Saturday Links

• My favorite literary award, the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, has unveiled its shortlist.

• The Millions has an interesting piece about literary portraits.

• Take a look at the best new facial hair in Hollywood.

• The Moviezzz Blog tells us what happened to the original Jennifer Parker!

Matthew McConaughey Has Achieved a New Level of Smugness Among Humans

I don't think anyone else has ever displayed a grin as self-satisfied as the one on the poster for Matthew McConaughey's upcoming, sure-to-be-awful movie, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

If the producers changed the title on this poster to Wouldn't You Like to Punch This Guy in the Face?, it would do more business than The Dark Knight.

Low Wattage

What is a movie critic to do when a film is so perfectly encapsulated by one word that there really can be nothing else of use to say about it?

For The International, the word is boring. It's so boring that I can hardly bring myself to discuss it -- its plot is too convoluted and boring to outline, its dialogue too inane and boring to quote, its characters too one-dimensional and boring to sketch. I suppose I must nevertheless attempt to explain why, precisely, The International is boring, but I fear the boredom has rendered me insensate and incapable. Under the best of conditions, boring things are difficult to describe. The kind of boredom induced by The International reminds me most of all of that strange condition where one is hungry but cannot, for some reason, bring oneself to eat anything -- the food sits wan, hollow, unappealing, and seemingly without nourishment, and a sad, itchy dissatisfaction settles upon one's soul. It's hard to make sense of this state. Why does it occur? Why is The International so much harder to watch than most other bad movies?

If you must know, The International is a thriller that stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol operative, and Watts plays Eleanor Whitman, an important Manhattan lawyer of some sort. Salinger is set upon breaking open a large-scale conspiracy involving an evil, greedy bank called IBBC, and so he has to jet off to many different countries, where he spends his time sneaking around various cities, demanding information, waving a gun around in public (the extras are strangely unconcerned by this behavior), and not shaving. Whitman has something to do with all this, but it's hard to figure out what the point of her character really is.

This plot was impossible for me to follow. Possibly other viewers will be able to make more sense of it than I was. During films of international intrigue, my brain often has trouble processing the dialogue. When the characters enter that rapid-fire conversational mode where frantic, official jargon gives way to shocking and important secrets about big corporations and/or the government, it's as though they're speaking in a foreign language. (On the other hand, when the dialogue departs from this style, it is comprehensible but painfully vapid.) But The International is more difficult than The Bourne Identity because it's characters are so hard to keep track of and their roles in the story so ill-defined.

Many vital names are presented, some of them attached to people, very few of which are distinct enough to tell apart. Even the protagonists have little in the way of personalities. Salinger is the usual loose cannon, perpetually bleeding and vengeful; Whitman is an earnest lawyer from a TV drama. Owen spends the entire movie with a smoldering glower, and he still does better than Watts, embarrassingly insipid here.

There's no convincing human element in this movie, just a lot of talk and movement and furtiveness. There's plenty of intrigue, but it's not at all intriguing. And aside from one effective set piece, in which Salinger shoots up the Guggenheim Museum, The International hasn't the firepower to deliver the goods as an actioner, either. In the two major chase scenes, Salinger doesn't even bother to run; he walks. This is especially surprising because Tom Twyker, of Run Lola Run (which had as much running as its title indicated), directed this slick, listless travelogue, which scampers eagerly from place to place (with an unimaginative overhead shot to introduce each) but can't find anything interesting to do in any of its locations.

The International has received praise for its timeliness because its villains are bankers, and everyone is angry with the bigshots of the financial world right now. But this does not actually make the movie seem relevant. Nonsense is never relevant, whatever its ostensible subject, and boredom is never timely. I wonder if its two main characters, Salinger and Whitman, weren't named after great writers deliberately to remind us that, with all the art out there that isn't boring, we really oughn't waste our time with this junk.