Like finding a spare twenty in your pocket

Flipping around after Brit Hume and . . .

The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon, Shirley McClaine, and Fred MacMurray.

We all, I think, imagine ourselves as CC Baxter, covering up for the rats around us, then finally taking a stand and rewarded with a Miss Kubilik for our efforts.

"I guess that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise . . . I'd spell it out for you, but I can't spell."

And:

"I love you, Miss Kubilik . . . Did you hear me, Miss Kubilik? I absolutely adore you."

"Shut up and deal."

Oscars!

I'm guessing a big night for No Country for Old Men: picture, director, adapted screenplay, supporting and a lot of the technical stuff.

Otherwise, I'll take the chalk: Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, Ruby Dee.

Beyond that, I'll be posting in the comments section over at The Irish Trojan.

Update: Nothing like 1) Stewart bombing with three atrocious political jokes in a row before recovering slightly with his black/woman President asteroid thing, and 2) Amy Adams lip-synching as poorly as a guest on the old Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

A whole hour, and no crapping about global warming. A record?

Update: Tilda Swinton, in the first stunner of the night. Tough category--I saw every performance except Ruby Dee's, all four were exemplary, and Dee was supposed to win.

The Coens, best screenplay: The first sign it might be a big night for No Country For Old Men. (Bardem was a stand-alone.)

Update:And while we're at it, what about the sorry state of film songs? Best Song once went to classics like "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow." As recent as two decades ago, "Footloose" competed with "Against All Odds" competed with . . .

HOLY CRAP! Marie Cotillard?

Anyone with the Swinton-Cotillard parlay?

Okay, back to my original point. Do you realize there was a time that "You're the One That I Want" from "Grease" didn't crack the top five? Or "Grease," the song itself? Or that none of the original songs the Bee Gees wrote for "Saturday Night Fever" earned a nomination?

This time? I suppose the catchy reggae-ish Kristin Chenoweth song from "Enchanted" is catchy. And that thing about the kid musician. Catchy. That's it.
And we'll never hear these songs again.

(Thought, a day later: I saw that spikey little song from Juno performed live (well, live at the event)--not the one about how could anyone want anyone else, but the one about never meeting a boy named Troy she didn't like. It blew away the five on Oscar night, both in composition and delivery. Geez, what's with this Academy? Or was the song not written for the movie?)

Update: Okay--Stewart redeems himself majorly by bringing the girl from best song back to talk.

I'm with Brendan Loy (over at Irish Trojan) re the long, unfunny routines, the endless segments, etc. But to be specific, the worst--the really only truly unforgivable--aspect of each Oscars telecast is the shutting off of the microphone just as the One Winner Too Many steps forward. That tactic is a disgrace, especially given how unfairly it is dispensed. Adrien Brody can shush Bill Conti's orchestra so he might speak two, three, four minutes long. Julia Roberts can speak so long she might be filibustering the Voting Rights Act, and people can marvel at her "spunk." But let the second winning Art Director try to say hello to her children, and not only does the orchestra start up, they shut off the freaking mike , thus maximizing the humiliation toward this poor person at the precise apex of that person's professional life.

If this will continue, never mind Stewart or Goldberg or even Chris Rock. Assign Chuck Barris the permanent host and be done with it.

Stewart isn't having a good night. But his gesture toward that poor embarrassed woman makes up for everything.

Oscar-watch

When I was young, I wanted to do two things: read books and go to the movies.

In high school, I wanted to read, write, drive a car, and go to the movies.

In my twenties, I wanted to read, write, teach, get laid, and go to the movies.

In my thirties, I wanted to read, write, jog, get laid, watch baseball, play softball, play golf and go to the movies.

Now, in my forties, I want to read, write, jog, play golf, teach, watch baseball ands go to the movies. (Out of deference to Astro-Girl, matters of intimacy are omitted.)

Sense a pattern?

The idea of going to the movies has never waned; the idea of watching the Oscars, however, has gone up or down with the quality of the movies.

A few years ago, home alone one Sunday night after after softball, exhausted and bored, I could not bring myself to watch any Oscar show that would award Best Picture to such a pile of crap as American Beauty, a film that tweaked the genre of Release Your Inner Jew films (Ordinary People, Interiors) and replaced it with Release Your Inner Gay. I had grown up with the Oscars, had reveled in the Best Picture victory of Rocky and mourned the loss of Apocalypse Now (to Kramer vs. Kramer, no less!). There were years, boys and girls, when the Final Four championship would actually be scheduled against the Oscars, and I felt genuine torment over which one to give my attention. (The best solution I remember was in 1987, when I was home for Spring Break, and my family and I dragged my parents color TV from the bedroom to the living room and placed it side-by-side with our living room console, thus allowing me to watch Keith Smart's jump shot to lead Indiana over Syracuse just as Dianne Wiest was accepting her Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters.)

However, in the late nineties and early aughts, my attention dwindled to nothing, then reached its apotheosis (never mind waiting for them, I out-and-out avoided them) with American Beauty.

What brought me back? I can remember a certain trio of films released in December, 2005, essentially two winters ago: Capote, The Squid and the Whale, and Good Night and Good Luck. Of those films, only Squid I would describe as great(I caught the tail end of the film last night and had to watch it to the end, so transfixed was I with Jeff Daniels' boorish self-pity in easily the best performance of his career), but all three films struck me, in a way that almost defies explanation, as the sort of films we go to the movies for. All three were bound up with the Oscars, and so I was eager, two months later, to watch. The same feeling strikes me this year, as--for the very first time--I will have seen all five nominated-for-Best-Picture films by the time of the broadcast, and will have accumulated my own rooting interests (especially Ellen Page for Best Actress and Saoirse Ronan for Best Supporting Actress, dark horses both).

In recent months, as the number of art film houses in Houston has reduced to one (The River Oaks 3, with the nabobs of Weingarten Realty eyeing the choice location near West Gray and Shepherd), I've decided to appreciate what remains, and have spent a few afternoons availing myself of the ancient old palace. To be sure, my selection has been limited; DesertRose recommended a movie a month or so ago--Starting Out in the Evening, or something--but with Houston's art films limited to a total of three screens, said film was here and gone in what felt like a week. But I have seen enough.

Inspired by Prof Jimmy's nice words, I'm going to forget all about politics for a weekend and think about that far more satisfying element of the world, movies.

To start, some earlier thoughts about Atonement here.

Atonement

In a previous life, I'm someone's perpetual guest at an English country house between the wars, a fantasy I've nursed over the last decade-and-a-half, starting with Brideshead Revisited (first the book, then the mini-series, then the book-on-tape, then finally the mini-series on DVD); and straight through to The Remains of the Day, Howard's End, Gosford Park, and the writings of P.G. Wodehouse.

"Things were much better upstairs than downstairs," Roger Ebert usually writes when another Arcadian movie opens. True enough: but things seemed quite good for the tuxedoed Wilcoxes and Stevenses shimmering through the mansions with an air of command. (Below the rank of under-butler--perhaps not so great.) I've probably read Brideshead a half-dozen times (once, in part, on New Year's Eve, and when I returned to the book six months later, I saw the spare cigar ash between the pages); I've listened to it on tape at least as many times, and I knew Astro-Girl was the one for me when she asked to eshew the traditional Wedding March in favor of what Grace had walked to when she married Leo in "Will and Grace." The tune? "Theme from Brideshead Revisited." I became so familiar with the customs of between-war English country living that I imagined I could have slipped inconspiciously into someone's Great Hall and fallen right in: languor from breakfast until tea, grog tray until seven, cocktails in the library, dinner at right, followed by the women retiring to the library while the men enjoy cigars and port in the dining room. Heaven can wait.

(And this only applies to fiction. The habits of the wilderness-era Churchill at Chartwell are something else I've committed to memory: from six a.m. breakfast brought to him by his valet to the manic late-night composition of his books and speeches.)

So it was hard, during the first hour anyway, to view a movie like Atonement without something approaching inter-generational jealousy, so fixated was I with the interior design, the clothes, the position of the chaise lounges by the pool, the--best of all--strange privacy such a large house and grounds would allow (the limiations of which privacy produce the two gut-wrenching moments in the film's first hour).

But, separating my own prejudices from the film itself, the first hour of Atonement left me spellbound, which response was so much bound up in one recurring image: the face of Saoirse Ronan, as 13 year-old Briony, whose stare out her second-floor window, then into the library, then into the darkness, will remain the enduring motif of this film long after people have forgotten the specifics of why exactly Keira Knightly jumped into the pond, or what exactly the twins were up to. What did Matthew Broderick sing to Uma Thurman in The Producers? "That face, that face . . ."

Saorise's Ronan's face--indicative of what Briony sees, and how she reacts to it-- is the story of the movie's first hour.

Which brings me to the second hour.

Was I alone in thinking, What the hell is going on here? I could give myself over to Robbie's (actor James McAvoy's) desperation in the hopeless first English assault in France, the one that ended in near-catastrophy in Dunkirk, before the evacuation that has never, in my mind, been given its due on film (even this one). I could understand Robbie's pain at seeing Cecilia after 3 1/2 years, and the hopelessness of the Allied defense against the first surge of the Third Reich, and the trying circumstances of volunteer nurses in dealing with the horrors of the battlefield, but damnit . . . where is this all going?

The second hour of the film has--what?--five flashbacks, two flashforwards, and (apologies to Chevy Chase's Funny Farm) one flash-sideways. And I don't know if I was alone in thinking: Okay, this is compelling, and this is compelling, and this is compelling . . . but where the hell are we going?

One other thing. Romola Garni, God love her, does not carry the mail as the 18 year-old Briony. The reason here is her face, which lacks the intensity and--let's face it--the beauty of Ronan's. The fact that Darni doesn't look at all like Ronan (four years can be a long time to a girl, but not long enough to grow a cleft chin) is the least of it. Part of the heartbreaking quality of young Briony is the sense that she will, at the age of majority, be a stunner; that Cecilia will win Robbie merely by the accident of earlier birth, like an older son inheriting the family manse. This is a promise that Ronan doesn't deliver. Part of the tension in the film's second half is the 15-20 minutes we spend waiting to see how Briony turned out; and when she is finally revealed, with the blocking equivalent of a drum roll, the reaction is . . . Oh, you. I was reminded of Ally Sheedy at the end of The Breakfast Club, who was supposed to be revealed as a secret beauty at the end, but who instead received (courtesy of Molly Ringwald) as having her face washed of its personality. This hurt.

And then . . . and then, the last five minutes did the impossible, and made the entire previous hour not only explicable, but wrenching. All is forgiven.

Today's Question

I'm gearing up to watch my Christmas movies, one of which is Metropolitan.

Which brings me to today's question:

Whatever happened to Carolyn Farina?

She was the girl who played Audrey in Metropolitan, then Daniel Day-Lewis's priggish sister in Age of Innocence, then a cameo in Last Days of Disco, then one other film I'm going to see, then--NOTHING--the past nine years. No online info about her deciding to do experimental theatre or switch to architecture or enter an ashram in western Oregon. No walk-on during the last two years of "Will and Grace."

ZERO.

The long-awaited Metropolitan DVD came out. A certain Astro-Girl assures me that if I'm a good little boy, Santa may ho ho ho a certain winky winky into my stocking, itself containing commentary from Whit Stillman, Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols, whose character Charlie (if I read my Disco symbols correctly) ended up with Audrey in the end. But nothing from Carolyn Farina.

Where is this person?

The Writers' Strike continues

Took Astro-Girl to Gone Baby Gone on Saturday, saw the Horton cut-out in the lobby and thought: Hmm, did I cross a picket line? I asked my friend Cinco Paul--co-Horton writer, WGA card-holder and late-blooming rabble-rouser. Cinco's response:

No, you didn't cross a picket line. There's really
nothing for you to do, except spread the word, which
you seem already to be doing, and which I appreciate.
Public support is important. In January when scripted
TV runs out, just don't watch all the reality TV that
gets foisted on you (as if you would).

Went to a big rally on Friday. The Rev. Jesse Jackson
spoke, which I know you'd appreciate. Say what you
will about the man, he's a mesmerizing and effective
speaker. Rage Against the Machine also performed. It
was a bit of a left-fest. But for a middle of the
road guy like me, it was nice to play radical. And
march next to greats like Norman Lear and Garry
Marshall and all The Office writers and Julia
Louis-Dreyfus, etc., etc. It was fun wondering to
myself, "What do all these people write? What have
they written?" Ken and I designed our own t-shirts,
which read (as a tribute to Horton--which is at Fox,
the site of the rally): "a writer's a writer, no
matter how small."

Astro-Girl, when told of--come January or so--the loss of her beloved "Grey's Anatomy," her beloved "Private Practice," her beloved "Boston Legal," and her beloved (in all its forms) "Law & Order" (the regular, the major case, and the SUV) spoke out in favor of a quick settlement.

She quoted a famous Angeleno: "Can't we all get along?"

And she said, "We should all do what Horton says. We should give a hoot."

And, by the way, I did hear Reverend Jackson speak, in 1988, when I was TA at Binghamton University in upstate New York and the Rev was running for President. Ah, were those the days. Binghamton U is basically the five buroughs of New York City shipped 70 miles north and 100 miles west, but with all the city's appetites, resentments, and prejudices intact. I happened, 15 minutes before Jesse's speech, to stand at a the flashpoint of two flying wedges headed straight for one another: the Jewish students (still seething over "Hymietown" and whatnot) and the black students (taken as read). The lead Jewish flyer was screaming about how Jesse hated Jews; the lead person of color was going on about how the black soliders freed the Jews in World War II. Entertaining stuff.

Yes: Jesse is mesmerizing; I saw it for myself. And I'm happy he's helping out the screenwriters (and by extension, my friend Cinco) against the lying bloodsuckers of Hollywood. But what keeps him from greatness is that so much of what he says is crap; not just lies ("Why, Mr. O'Neill, here is the proof that Lt. Kerry was in Cambodia") but just so much bibble-babble: five, ten, fifteen bits of horsecrap for very minute expended, followed up by a plea for lighter sentences for crack dealers. Now, that's something we can all get behind, ya think?

But: Fight the power! Don't watch "Survivor: Hoboken," or whatever the hell it's called this month.

The Writer's Strike and Cinco

So, a writer's strike.

Meaning, I think, my friend Cinco Paul, whose Horton Hears a Who! is due out next spring.

I remember the last strike, nearly twenty years ago. I was addicted to Letterman then (no more), and the Oscars (same) and disruption of both was the most tangible effect on my life. Carson and Letterman went with re-runs for a few weeks, then both came back, wrote their own stuff for awhile (or so we were told), and waited matters out.

Anyway, the strike does raise a point, one that is touched on by an essay by Rob Long and published a few weeks ago in the LA Times. The whole thing is here, but the important passage is here:

In 1988, when the last WGA strike reached a settlement -- and in this context, the phrase "reached a settlement" refers to the moment that the guild membership, exhausted and broke after five months, whimpered its way to an unconditional surrender -- a few days later there appeared all over town, like crocuses poking through the snow, an awful lot of spec scripts.

The town was flooded with buddy comedies, cop dramas, blended-family sitcoms, erotic thrillers and cop-partnered-with-orangutan projects. So many, in fact, that it was clear that a lot of striking guild members, when not picketing on Lankershim or brooding about their ill-treatment, had been doing a good deal more than noodling around an idea.

Although they publicly claimed to have spent the five-month strike merely thinking about writing -- and the three days after it up in Big Sur, you know, just plowing through it, totally focused -- it was hard to deny that some guild members took the strike as an opportunity to hit reset on their careers. So among the foreclosures and the cancellations and the force majeur'ed contracts, there was, apparently, a bright side. Something to look forward to, I guess.

But that was back in 1988, before Starbucks and iPods and Wi-Fi. Back then, most writers wrote at home, so it was easy to sit in the backyard, away from prying eyes, and work on your serial killer spec in between strike meetings. Things are different now. These days, writers sit in public places all over town, earbuds in, laptops out. The strike is going to change all of that.

Okay, begs the question: how far-reaching is a writer's strike, exactly? Certainly those on salary stay home: no commuting to the studio, sitting around the table with Woody and the Simon brothers, sending out for Chinese. The on-site stuff is out.

Okay: what about scripts for hire? William Goldman wrote he never signed a contract to write a script for hire; instead, he and The Suit sat down, hammered out a fair price, shook hands, and months of agony later Goldman delivered his draft, then his second, then his third. And in a near half-century of writing in Hollywood, Goldman can count only one time he was completely screwed over: in the making of Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a vehicle for Chevy Chase when Chase was still hot, a Top-5 star in the midst of his last two moneymaking franchises (Fletch and Vacation). Goldman (his account) delivered what he thought was a Chevy Chase script, only to find that Chevy Chase all of a sudden didn't want to make a Chevy Chase movie; all of a sudden Chevy Chase wanted to be Max Von Sydow and make a movie about "the loneliness of invisibility."

Please stay seated for the rest of the story. The director attached to the project was Ivan Reitman, whose Stripes had made him a name and whose Ghostbusters had slotted him second as a license to print money, right behind King Spielberg. Reitman, no dummy, sided with Goldman, said he would straighten it out, and so he went to the money people and said, "Chevy is way off the reservation, doesn't know what he's doing, ruining the picture, and Chevy can't be budged. Goldman and I are in agreement. Him or us."

Reitman had his money on us. The studio went with him. And when Memoirs of an Invisible Man came out, starring Chevy Chase, it didn't last its first weekend before winning the hundred-yard dash to the video store.

I re-tell the story only to bring up one last anecdote, and a question.

The anecdote: After all was done, after three drafts had been turned in, after Goldman had been fired, he went to the studio to collect his money. Again, by his account, the Studio Guy said, No, we're not going to pay you.

Goldman: Come again?

Studio Guy: No, we're not going to pay you. We have a lot of lawyers. How many do you have?

Eventually Goldman was paid--not nearly what he was owed, he maintains, but paid.

The question: let's say you've hired yourself out. You will produce a script on X day for Y dollars. And now a strike. Do you stop working?

Finally, the big macaroni. Lord knows it may be a rule more honored in the breach, but:

Does a strike theoretically compel a SWG signatory to stop writing altogether?

Check out the Long passages above. Of course a striking writer will spend his evening hours tapping out a spec for CSI: Miami or the next Sting, or Diner, or Annie Hall. But is writing in and of itself prohibited, even in theory?

Update: An answer from the source, Cinco himself:

So here's how it works:

During the strike, no writer is allowed to do ANY WORK for a struck company. If you've made a deal for a screenplay with a studio, you don't write another word until the strike's over. It's a legal strike, which trumps your contractual obligation.

For instance, my situation with Horton Hears a Who. In the next couple of months they are going to need writing done. I can't help them. It's frustrating, because I want the movie to be the best it can be...but I can't do it. I shouldn't do it. One of the main reasons I'm on strike is because the studios don't pay any residuals to writers on animated features. You heard right. Zip. Horton is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. But I will get no residuals. Is writing an animated feature different from writing a live action one? No. Except that it actually is a lot more work--I've been working on Horton for four years now. No live action movie in production demands that sort of time.

Now, as far as spec scripts go--there's nothing prohibiting you from writing one. And it's nearly impossible for a writer not to write. So I personally have no problem with people who do. As long as they're doing it completely on spec. Trouble is, the spec market isn't what it used to be...so very few of them will sell.

Anyway, that's the situation. Fight the Power!

AFI Top Hundred

Something tells me that this is the last time for Citizen Kane at number one.

The complete list here.

The Godfather has been edging ever upward the past few decades. Now number two, it is poised to take over as number one.

It is a close call, and Kane is certainly a masterpiece. But . . . to pick at a masterpiece, a few things simply do not hold up. The whole premise of the movie, for one--what newsreel service would hold up news of the death of a famous person for an entire week while poor Thompson went out in search of the answer to a word? And, if a reporter for a newsreel, where is Thompson's cameraman and camera?

And--to repeat what struck me at 13, when I first saw the movie--is there anyone not cognizant of the fact that Kane whispers his famous word alone in his bed, completely out of earshot of everyone? Who in the world hears "Rosebud"? Certainly not the nurse, who enters from the other room.

Some--not a lot, but some--of the dialog is painful to listen to: "Looky out here in the window!" And some of it is simply purposeless: see Joseph Cotten and Everett Sloane's conversation at the party introducing the stolen New York Chronicle staff, when they discuss whether the new staff will change Charlie or vice-versa. It's an interesting idea, but it goes nowhere, because the notion is simply dropped once Kane returns from Europe. In fact, we never see nor hear of this new staff ever again. (In fact, all account of Kane's career as a yellow journalist is simply dropped after the Spanish-American War, save for his brief attempt to gin up his second wife's opera career; the account of the last forty years of his life is given over to his domestic troubles, his run for the governership, Susan's singing career, and finally Florida.)

Understand: none of the above is to dislodge the film as a masterpiece. It is. In fact, I spent a half-hour last night arguing that very point with my new uncle in-law. Even now, when I see it, scene after scene prompts me nearly to applause. To mention just one eight-minute segment in the movie: Just about everything remembered in Thatcher's memoirs, starting with Agnes Moorhead in the cabin, to "Merry Christmas," to "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper," to twenty-five year-old Welles' first appearance on screen, the scene in the city room with Thatcher and Bernstein: "You provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war." Then the end: "You know Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place . . . in sixty years."

It's just, from a distance of thirty-five years, a little older than half the age of Citizen Kane, The Godfather is starting to hold up just a bit better. The characters are fuller, the screenplay richer. The music is better. The cinematography comparison is a wash, with Gordon Willis's use of colors, of darkness and sunlight, matched by Greg Tolan's tracking and deep focus. Directing, narrowly, goes to Coppola over Welles, on the basis of the performances Coppola was able to coax, uniformly brilliant from the Godfather down to Enzo, the baker's helper. (Trivia: what do Coppola and Welles have in common for their respective efforts? Neither won Best Director at the Oscars, though both did win, as a co-writer, Best Screenplay. Welles, who should have also won for Best Actor, didn't.)

Conclusion? The 2018 poll will have a switching at numbers one and two.

Final Oscar thoughts

This was the all-timer in dreariness. By the end, DeGeneres was trying as desperately for laughs as a pre-Deano Jerry Lewis working the early show at Moe’s I-95 Supper Club. Wait–someone in the band smokes dope? Bob Hope wouldn’t have attempted that 35 years ago.

A movie I actually liked a lot won. One of the best six directors of the past hundred years FINALLY won. And yet the thing staggered toward the finish line and fell over face-first.

I saw Clint Eastwood yawning. He wasn’t alone.

Live-blogging at the Oscars

Opening monologue. Degeneres bombs. "And Al Gore, who the American people did select . . ." Christ. What next, Enron jokes?

First guy to get played off: the technical guy for Pan's Labyrinth . . . just so we could go back for more Degeneres humor. This is turning into a dreary evening. And why didn't they award a best-supporting actor or actress award early, just to liven things up?

Will Smith's kid and Little Miss Sunshine himself . . . award for the shorts! Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, brother.

Dinner break.

Alan Arkin wins--good for him. LMS's consolation prize?

Oh, now DeGeneres interviews Wahlberg right after Wahlberg lost. Yipes.

Now, the Gore song.

1. Nice, being lectured about cardon emissions by the Gulfstream crowd.

2. That stuff in the back is, flat-out political advocacy. “Elect leaders” who do this and that.

3. Gore and DiCaprio. I’m going to go idle my car in my parking lot for a half-hour.

Writer's montage isn't bad.

Hanks and Mirren for Best Adapted Screenplay. NOW can we get rolling here?

And the winner is: William Monahan . . . for translating Infernal Affairs into English.

Ahhh, I wanted Cohen to win.

DeGeneres with an Oscar caddie. Smiles.

DeGeneres asks Spielberg for a second take. OK. That's three laughs in ninety minutes.

Almost ten now. Posted this haiku on Irish Trojan:

Seinfeld presents doc
Await inevitable
Gore getting restless

And Gore wins. Says, "My fellow Americans . . ." thus cancelling out his funny moment earlier.

Oh, God . . . ten o'clock, and we haven't gotten to the roll call of the dead.

Ten twenty-five, and nothing yet.

An Inconvenient Truth has just won two more Oscars than Manhattan did.

Thanks to Helen Mirren for being the only winner not requiring a) a script, or b) a stammer.

DeGeneres just resorted to a "the band smokes dope" joke. 1971 just called for his puinch line.

Forrest Whitacker reads, but he's all right.

Scrosese wins: "Can you double-check the envelope?" The Departed is not one of his best five films, but this is how things go.

Clint Eastwood, caught yawning.

Diane Keaton, sputtering and stammering and channeling Annie Hall.

And The Departed, your Best Picture.

Good for Scorsese. But a dreary evening.

And to all a good night

Ted Turner I don't have much use for.

But TBS does air A Christmas Story for twenty-four hours straight, every Christmas Eve at 7 pm CST to every Christmas Day at 7 pm CST.

Meaning?

All is forgiven.

Merry Christmas.

Larry Miller and the Academy of the Underrated

I sometimes think of Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy, and their "Academy of the Overrated" in the Woody Allen movie Manhattan.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gustav Mahler, to begin with.

Yeah, okay, I don't listen to classical music, but I've read basically every word still in print from Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned excepted), and, no, NO.

Which is probably what Allen intended. So be it.

What should exist is an Academy of the Underrated.

To whit, Larry Miller.

Miller was a stand-up comedian of several years who was more or less a constant presence in one mediocre movie after another throughout the nineties. To women who say, "Who?" when I mention his name, I always say, "The suck-up boutique manager in Pretty Women, which invariably elicits an, "Ahhh."

Little did I know, pre-9/11, that Miller is a writer as well, of of great profundity. And now, as I albatross around the city, my great pleasure is to read his book, Spoiled Rotten America. This is a book I enjoyed for the first sentence of chapter two:

"I saw Godfather III again last night, and it's still terrible."

Yes, and yes again.

Oh, and happy 500th post.

How much coolness does Jack Black have left?

Jack Black became cool in the last five minutes of High Fidelity, singing "Let's Get it On."

It was then we heard about Tenacious D, and OH MY GOD, he was a singer all along!

This was followed by School of Rock: very cool.

It started to go bad with Macho Libre.

His Tenacious D performance on "Saturday Night Live": Not good. In point of fact, if you're going to sing a song about Heavy Metal that simply persuades me to look for my Led Zeppelin tapes in preference to you . . . well, what good are you?

Now, his next damn movie.

Jack Black is squandering his coolness faster than anyone since Chevy Chase.

Peter Boyle, RIP

Most of all, I’ll remember him in Taxi Driver.

Watch him in the “your work becomes you, you become your work” scene with DeNiro.

And, in the same movie, the best moment of Boyle's acting career: the cafeteria scene, when a half-dozen half-awake moonlighting hacks sit around a table. The subject of homosexuality comes up. Some Southern cabbie says, “You know, out in California, when two fags break up, the one fag has to pay the other alimony.”

A pause, as the group considers this. Finally, (the expression on his face is priceless) Boyle holds forth:

“Not bad!”

Southern guy: “Yeah, they’re way ahead out there.”

Oh, and one other memory: “Dueling Brandos” with John Belushi on SNL.

I would buy that entire season on DVD just to hear Belushi say, “Get the butter.” And Boyle, in a comic sketch with one of the kings, more than holds his own.

'United 93' wins New York Film Critics' Best Picture

Via The Irish Trojan.

Well-deserved, as far as I know. I never get to see enough movies in the theatre anymore; the only free time I seem to have is Saturday afternoons, which (thanks to college football) pretty much knocks out August 25th through December 5th. I had to take a personal day off from work in order to see Borat, which, along with United 93, Talladega Nights and Little Miss Sunshine, constituted the best of what I did see.

Just below that fabulous four is The Departed.

What I do want to see: the Bond film and The History Boys. Oh, and Rocky Balboa.

Saturday afternoon

There are greater films than Remains of the Day, but few that run their length without misstepping once.

This is the the sort of movie for which a DVR was invented. Scene after scene, there is nothing to do once you've seen them, but see them again.

Holy crap!

I mentioned to Astro-Girl the other day, "It's just too bad. Ricky Bobby comes out, and everyone's talking about it. Then Borat comes along and blows off everyone's doors, and--have you noticed?--nobody's been talking about Ricky Bobby lately."

Wait: does anyone know that Frenchy the stock-car driver, aka Jean Girard, is played by none other than Sasha Baron Cohen?

When Talladega Nights first came out, Jim Emerson, filling in for the ill Roger Ebert, wrote this. Money quote:

And the way Sacha Baron Cohen, as Ricky Bobby's gay French nemesis Jean Girard, pronounces his name (something like "Yrikee Bubbee" may be the closest print equivalent) is, remarkably, funny every single time. If Cohen's Borat movie ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") is anywhere near as amusing as this one, a movie star is born. Er, "boorn."

He says it there, it comes out here.

Spooky, bro.