Spango Dips

Here are the notables, or at least the ones I can recall right now.

1. Tilda Swinton wins
2. Tilda Swinton looks like Clay Aiken (thanks to Mont Chris for this insight)
3. Marion Cotillard wins
4. Marion Cotillard is the most beautiful woman on earth
5. Marion Cotillard delivers the best acceptance speech in a really long time
6. Marketa Irglova is outrageously driven offstage before she can say one word
7. Marketa Irglova is invited back onstage to make her remarks after all, in a really uncharacteristic show of class and kindness by the Academy
8. Javier Bardem might be gay
9. Nicole Kidman looks less like a person every Oscars
10. Enchanted probably sucks even more than I was expecting
11. Cormac McCarthy is in attendance

Am I forgetting anything?

Away from Her ★★★½

Wrenching portrait of a long and loving marriage dissolved when the wife (Christie) develops Alzheimer’s disease. The film is more about the coping efforts of her husband (Pinsent), and the new sort-of-life he builds around her condition, than anything else, and told from his perspective it’s a remarkably sad (and yet shockingly unsentimental) story. Bitter and tender in equal measure, and full of oddities in the mise-en-scène and the editing, which, despite almost certainly being a product of Polley’s directorial novicehood, manage to make the movie more memorable, more poignant, and more its own. Christie delivers the performance of her career; Pinsent and Dukakis are no less brilliant. From Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”

(2007-Canada) C-110m. D: Sarah Polley. W: Sarah Polley. DP: Luc Montpellier. JULIE CHRISTIE, GORDON PINSENT, OLYMPIA DUKAKIS, MICHAEL MURPHY, KRISTEN THOMSON, WENDY CREWSON. [PG-13]

Rihanna featuring Jay-Z: Umbrella

79/100

The baffling thing is why an album entitled Good Girl Gone Bad would kick off with such a tender pledge of loyalty and friendship. These lyrics aren’t just sweet, they’re actually virtuous. When’s the last time you could say that about a pop song?

Refreshing though they may be, however, its virtuous lyrics are not this song’s main virtue. As is—to put it mildly—common in the pop world, it’s the hook that made the song the overwhelming phenomenon it was and is, as this list will corroborate. It’s one of the best hooks in years. On my second listen through the song, I was already so determined to belt along with Rihanna full-voice in my car that I found it frustrating not to be able to memorize the chorus lyrics faster. This hook destroys brains. Add to that the incredible shine of the Dream/Stewart team’s synths, the winsome, unaffected sincerity of Rihanna’s delivery, and the masterstroke of having Jay-Z’s guest verse take the opening slot, and you’re on your way to a lasting winner of a hit. [I also appreciate the way the bassline subtly changes on the last choruses to reharmonize the prenominate amazing hook, unnecessary though it may be. I don't know why I so often respond favorably to excess.]

Seem like a low rating? Blame the bridge. It doesn’t go. First, that beat’s too good to drop out for that long. Second, it’s a suckerpunch when the crispy textures and dark, velvety melodies from the verses and choruses get unceremoniously and abruptly swapped for a gooey Lionel Richie detour. Piano and hand claps? Come on. That’s not this song. Third, the transition back to the chorus, as Rihanna goes to the leading tone, is the one trite melodic move in the entire track. Word to the wise: bridges generally arrive at a song’s dramatic peak, when stakes are highest. It really lets the air out of the song’s sails to fuck things up there.

That’s the only real chink; it just happens to be a sizable one. But hold the song up against the rest of the radio pabulum of last year (jeez, look at its competition for the Song of the Year Grammy!) and it shines like a diamond.

4:36. FROM THE ALBUM GOOD GIRL GONE BAD. P: THE-DREAM, TRICKY STEWART. W: TERIUS “THE DREAM” NASH, CHRISTOPHER STEWART, AND JAY-Z. US RELEASE: MARCH 29, 2007. DEF JAM RECORDS.

Zodiac ★★½

Bemusing true crime film about titular San Francisco serial killer of the 1960s and 70s, whose identity was never verified, as told from the perspective of the detective in charge of the case (Ruffalo), the reporter in charge of the story (Downey), and the reporter’s cartoonist ally Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal), who soon becomes the case’s most committed and expert worker. Probably gets closer to the feeling of an actual serial killer investigation, in all of its clumsiness and disorder, than any other movie in memory, though this quality ironically makes for bad drama a lot of the time; at the very least, there is absolutely no excusing the running time. Creative, patient direction from Fincher and a superb supporting cast certainly sweeten the pot. Based on the the real Robert Graysmith’s nonfiction bestseller.

(2007) C-158m. D: David Fincher. W: James Vanderbilt. DP: Harris Savides. MARK RUFFALO, JAKE GYLLENHAAL, ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., ANTHONY EDWARDS, BRIAN COX, CHLOË SEVIGNY, CHARLES FLEISCHER, ZACH GRENIER, PHILIP BAKER HALL, ELIAS KOTEAS, DONAL LOGUE, JOHN CARROLL LYNCH, DERMOT MULRONEY, JOHN GETZ, ADAM GOLDBERG, CANDY CLARK, JAMES LE GROS, CLEA DUVALL, BARRY LIVINGSTON. HD Widescreen. [R]

300 ★★½

Lovably ludicrous film of Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name, which I’m told has something to do with the Battle of Thermopylae but which mostly seems concerned with depicting as much decapitation and dismemberment (often involving monsters) and Skinemax-class rutting as possible against red skies.  Naturally, it’s pretty good.  In addition to its hyper-stylization, it’s also flush with thoroughly modern trappings which deepen its historical—ahem—issues, but it’s hard to let that get in the way of such a fun time. OK, the hair mousse quotient is a bit high, but that’s it.

(2007) C-117m. D: Zack Snyder. W: Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon. DP: Larry Fong. GERARD BUTLER, LENA HEADEY, DOMINIC WEST, DAVID WENHAM, VINCENT REGAN, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, TOM WISDOM, ANDREW PLEAVIN, RODRIGO SANTORO, STEPHEN MCHATTIE. Super 35. [R]

Scanners ★★

As with many Cronenberg films, a trippy premise takes center stage: “scanners” are people with telepathic/telekinetic capabilities, who can use their brains to manipulate and attack others. Unlike in most other Cronenberg films, this premise is not explored in any really satisfying way, but rushed out as a thin plank on which to prop up a dreary thriller plot, in which a good-guy scanner (Lack) helps authorities hunt a bad-guy scanner (Ironside). Some wonderfully gruesome special effects (by Dick Smith) help matters some, but not enough; the aptly-named Stephen Lack, in nothing less than the lead role, delivers what is probably literally the worst performance ever captured on film.

(1981-Canada) C-102m. D: David Cronenberg. W: David Cronenberg. DP: Mark Irwin. JENNIFER O’NEILL, STEPHEN LACK, PATRICK MCGOOHAN, LAWRENCE DANE, ROBERT SILVERMAN. [R]

The Phantom of Liberty ★★★

Typical (if you’ll permit the word) late-Buñuelian farce skewering the self-made prisons of modern French bourgeois society. Composed of ironic vignettes which are deliberately strung together in a fickle, inattentive manner, making for a subversive exercise in anti-drama (co-writer Carrière has indicated that one of the film’s precepts during conception was to leave each story just as it was becoming interesting). It’s clever and entertaining in its giddy absurdity, and even in the Buñuel catalog there’s no other film exactly like it, but next to the scathing brilliance of its immediate forerunner, THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, it can’t help but look a little slight.

(1974-France-Italy) C-104m. D: Luis Buñuel. W: Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière. DP: Edmond Richard. JEAN-CLAUDE BRIALY, ADOLFO CELI, MICHEL PICCOLI, MONICA VITTI. [R]

The Savages ★★★

Acid, refreshingly untidy comedy about distant siblings (Linney, Hoffman) forced to work together to find end-of-life care for their cantankerous, delusional old coot of a father (Bosco). Cringe-inducing in its warts-and-all frankness at times, but ultimately endears with a guileless warmth, for which we might credit the complexity and tenderness of the two main characters, and the utterly perfect performances of the actors portraying them.

(2007) C-113m. D: Tamara Jenkins. W: Tamara Jenkins. DP: W. Mott Hupfel III. LAURA LINNEY, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, PHILIP BOSCO, PETER FRIEDMAN, DAVID ZAYAS, GBENGA AKINNAGBE, CARA SEYMOUR. [R]