Spango Dips

Man, the decrepit, irrelevant AMPAS did right by the movies of the past year, for once in its miserable life! Check the list! That’s eight each for No Country and There Will Be Blood! F yeah!

All the “craft” awards should be swallowed up by those two, at the very least; they might be long shots for Best Picture, but the fact that they were even nominated shows more adventurousness (or resignation, depending on how you look at it) from Academy voters than we’ve seen in perhaps decades. TWWB might be the weirdest movie ever nominated for Best Picture. Think it over.

Other pleasant surprises: Ellen Page gets a full-fledged Best Actress nom! Yes, it was a horrifically weak year for female roles, and Julie Christie will probably win anyway (for what is supposedly a daring turn à la Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, though I’ve yet to see it [Away from Her, that is]), but I genuinely feel that her (Ellen Page’s) performance is sort of immortally great. I’m glad Juno got the other honors that were predicted for it (Picture, Screenplay; Director is something of a surprise), but I daresay Ms. Page is the real reason those of us who love that movie love it. Yay for her.

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson’s War. A magnificent performance that made for probably the only strong and lasting thing about that movie. He had an exceptional year, resumé-wise, and somehow I thought CWW would be the last of his three 2007 roles to be recognized, but no! It’s the right call. And speaking of Hoffman and the year he had,

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was justly snubbed! Maybe voters weren’t hoodwinked by the totally unreasonable amount of critical praise that worthless movie received (and the tsunami of bullshit about “genre” trotted out to buttress it).

OK, so, that’s all I can think of right now, but overall, we’re good.  I’m very content.

Now: disappointments. There are two.

1. Jonny Greenwood. That’s too bad.

2. Now I have to actually see Atonement.

There Will Be Blood ★★★½

Dark and ravishing film about an American oil man (Day-Lewis), in the industry’s earliest days, finding great wealth in a California town, amid conflicts with his young son (Freasier) and the town’s resident faith healer (Dano). Based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, the film is surprisingly distant from the author’s usual territories of allegory and morality play, letting the characters’ stormy personalities take center stage instead (which I suppose makes it not at all distant from the usual territories of the director). As ambitious as any of Anderson’s films, and almost certainly the most beautiful; cinematographer Elswit, production designer Jack Fisk, and composer Jonny Greenwood are in rare form.

(2007) C-158m. D: Paul Thomas Anderson. W: Paul Thomas Anderson. DP: Robert Elswit. DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, PAUL DANO, CIARÁN HINDS, KEVIN J. O’CONNOR, DILLON FREASIER, RUSSELL HARVARD, DAVID WILLIS, HANS HOWES, DAVID WARSHOFSKY. Panavision. [R]

Into the Wild ★★★

Lush film of Jon Krakauer’s bestseller: the true story of wanderer Chris McCandless, who graduated college and immediately abandoned civilization, yearning to brave the Alaskan wilderness and live by his wits in solitude. It’s not without its share of missteps as it leaps across chronological divides and between vistas, but a palpable yearning ties its many episodes together commendably, making for what is almost definitely Penn’s best work as a director. A tour de force performance from newcomer Hirsch deserves much of the credit for the film’s success, although he gets no shortage of help from a tremendous supporting cast and surely some of the most heroic location scouting in modern film history. Most conspicuous drawback: Eddie Vedder’s score hits the nail a bit too squarely on the head.

(2007) C-140m. D: Sean Penn. W: Sean Penn. DP: Eric Gautier. EMILE HIRSCH, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, WILLIAM HURT, JENA MALONE, BRIAN DIERKER, CATHERINE KEENER, VINCE VAUGHN, KRISTEN STEWART, HAL HOLBROOK. Super 35. [R]

Character A delivers bad news or a lethal put-down to Character B, or interrupts Character B in the middle of something important and/or embarrassing. They are indoors. Character B whispers “get out.” Two awkward silent seconds pass. Then Character B repeats himself in a shout: “GET OUT!!”, after which Character A slinks away in sheepish despondency.

Start keeping a tally of how many movies feature this exact scene. It will spin your head.

Just once, I would like to see Character A get the message and leave the room after the whisper.

Lars and the Real Girl ★★★½

Heartrending depiction of loneliness, in which socially awkward Lars (Gosling) purchases a sex doll for sexless companionship, testing his small town in the process. Significantly funnier and more poignant than the premise suggests, with a deep, fully considered screenplay from Six Feet Under alumna Oliver, and a home run performance from Gosling.

(2007) C-106m. D: Craig Gillespie. W: Nancy Oliver. DP: Adam Kimmel. RYAN GOSLING, EMILY MORTIMER, PAUL SCHNEIDER, KELLI GARNER, PATRICIA CLARKSON. [PG-13]

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ★★★

Grisly, potent film of Stephen Sondheim’s famed stage musical, in which titular barber (Depp), exiled and robbed of his wife and child by a cruel judge (Rickman), returns to London and takes up his razor as an instrument of vengeance. Humorous, tragic, as bloody as even the most intemperate of Dario Argento’s films, and with songs brought to vivid life by a vocally capable cast and beautiful production values. Burton was indubitably the man for the job, and Depp does a fine job too (though one does wonder whether he was cast purely by default).

(2007-US-Great Britain) C-116m. D: Tim Burton. W: John Logan. DP: Dariusz Wolski. JOHNNY DEPP, HELENA BONHAM CARTER, ALAN RICKMAN, TIMOTHY SPALL, SACHA BARON COHEN, JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER, LAURA MICHELLE KELLY, JAYNE WISENER, ED SANDERS. [R]

Charlie Wilson’s War ★★½

Curiously flat film about the singlehanded, and successful, effort of Congressman Charlie Wilson (Hanks) to arm Afghanistan’s Mujahideen against Soviet aggressors in the 1980s. Floats along well enough on its humor, which is ample, and which is what writer Sorkin does best, and then just when its larger political or historical message seems to be jelling, it races toward a limp conclusion, almost insisting on its own triviality. Hanks is serviceable, Roberts sleepwalks, and Hoffman is scintillating. From the book by George Crile.

(2007) C-97m. D: Mike Nichols. W: Aaron Sorkin. DP: Stephen Goldblatt. TOM HANKS, JULIA ROBERTS, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, AMY ADAMS, NED BEATTY, OM PURI, CHRISTOPHER DENHAM. [R]

Michael Clayton ★★★

Above-average, if still rather conventional, legal thriller, in which Clooney’s titular character, a major firm’s top “fixer,” becomes a key pawn in a huge class-action suit against an agricultural megacorp. Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton make for one of the more explosive dramatic triangles in recent memory, and the film is mostly tight and restrained narratively, and very nimbly directed by BOURNE screenwriter Gilroy. It only begins to go wrong in the last ten minutes, which feel like more of a Hollywood cop-out than the otherwise quite toothy screenplay deserved.

(2007) C-119m. D: Tony Gilroy. W: Tony Gilroy. DP: Robert Elswit. GEORGE CLOONEY, TOM WILKINSON, TILDA SWINTON, SYDNEY POLLACK, SEAN CULLEN, MERRITT WEVER, ROBERT PRESCOTT, TERRY SERPICO, KEN HOWARD. Panavision. [R]

Finally.

1. Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity
2. Radiohead: In Rainbows
3. Animal Collective: Strawberry Jam
4. Menomena: Friend and Foe
5. Panda Bear: Person Pitch
6. Dirty Projectors: Rise Above
7. Kanye West: Graduation
8. Battles: Mirrored
9. Jay-Z: American Gangster
10. Caribou: Andorra
11. Dinosaur Jr: Beyond
12. M.I.A.: Kala
13. Burial: Untrue
14. Les Savy Fav: Let’s Stay Friends
15. Jens Lekman: Night Falls Over Kortedala
16. Feist: The Reminder
17. Okkervil River: The Stage Names
18. Arcade Fire: Neon Bible
19. Blitzen Trapper: Wild Mountain Nation
20. Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil

Soak it up. As I’ve already intimated, it won’t be this good again for a long time.