October Review

Okay, so being unemployed for 3 weeks out of the month allowed me to watch a total of 38 horror movies, old and new, seen-before and never-seen-before. Yes, that disturbs and alarms me as well. Anyway, here's how they stacked up:

WORST OF THE WORST:
Canvas of Blood (1997)
Mind, Body & Soul (1992)
Danger on Tiki Island (1968)
Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1996)

BLAH
Superstition (1982)
The Horror Show (1989)
Final Exam (1981)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Abby (1974)
Tormented (1960)
Night of the Demon (1980)

OKAY
Trick 'r Treat (2009)
The Burning (1981)
Galaxy of Terror (1981)
Zombieland (2009)
Graduation Day (1981)
Dr. Giggles (1992)
Blacula (1972)
Attack of the Puppet People (1958)
The Man from Deep River (1972)
Shakma (1990)
How to Make a Monster (1958)

GOOD:
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964)
Dog Soldiers (2002)
The House by the Cemetery (1981)
Fight For Your Life (1977)
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)
Paranormal Activity (2009)
Phantasm (1979)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
J.D.'s Revenge (1976)
Dr. Cyclops (1940)
Cannibal Apocalypse (1980)

BEST IN SHOW:
This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967)
Black Sabbath (1963)
The Exorcist (1973)
Curse of the Demon (1957)
Island of Lost Souls (1933)

Yeesh. Time to see some art movies or something.

Nerd Alert

Full disclosure: sometime around 1993 or 1994, I won a Star Trek trivia contest at a convention, the prize being a free ticket to the next convention. So yeah, I'm an old-school Star Trek nerd of a pretty high order - not such a high order that I ever got dressed up as a Borg or went to Klingon language camp. But high enough that I do indeed know at least a couple of Klingon words (Qapla'!)

This is all to say that the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie has me feeling apprehensive. The Star Trek franchise is certainly in need of reinvention; Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise increasingly leaned on the same episodic formulas of The Next Generation, and on references back to the older series - the most popular Enterprise episodes are loaded with references to aliens and storylines from the original shows, signs of a franchise miring itself in the past rather than looking to the future (ironically). But at the same time, I don't know that J.J. Abrams is the guy for the job of reinvention in any manner other than financial - he seems to be more interested in melodramatic plot twists, sex, and flash rather than the humanistic, progressiveness that was the true achievement of the shows at their best.

So anyway, I'm hoping for the best in the new movie but girding myself for the worst. In the meantime I've been catching up on a bunch of episodes from the original series, and here's my extremely nerdy list of my ten favorite original Star Trek episodes:

10. "What Are Little Girls Made Of?": Something of a sentimental favorite, but there's something that I find appealingly Lovecraftian about this episode, in which Kirk contends with a group of androids out to replace humanity with their own superior forms. Featuring Ted Cassidy, Lurch from The Addams Family, as the most ancient android.

9. "The Trouble with Tribbles": Something of an obligatory pick, but it holds up really well - a simple plot elaborated with great dialogue and energy.

8. "Mirror, Mirror": One of the siller story ideas of the whole series (and that's saying something) but played with such confidence that it's entered pop culture - a goatee is forever shorthand for an evil twin.

7. "Where No Man Has Gone Before": The series pilot has a different, colder tone than the series would eventually adopt, but this one also established one of the series' primary theses - that all of mankind's scientific advancements are meaningless without hanging on to our shared humanity - key to the post-Hiroshima age.

6. "The Enterprise Incident": A perverse spy thriller of an episode inspired by the Pueblo incident.

5. "Journey to Babel": A crowded, exciting episode with great intrigue, plus Andorians and Tellarites (remember, nerd here).

4. "Balance of Terror": A suspenseful submarine-esque thriller, joined with the humanistic observation that even the enemy has their reasons.

3. "Amok Time": One of the best Spock episodes features the perfect irony of the coldly logical Vulcan turning into a lustful raging maniac.

2. "The City on the Edge of Forever": Written by Harlan Ellison (if I write that he won't sue me), this one has a literary quality unique to the series, forcing Kirk into a classic dilemma between duty and romance.

1. "The Devil in the Dark": I pick this as the best original series episode because not only is it a terrific, well-crafted narrative, but it's also a perfect distillation of the ideals of the series, that the universe is a big place and that anthropocentrism can get in the way of truth and progress. Not to mention that the Horta, a living rock creature, is a pretty cool idea.

My runners-up:
"The Enemy Within"
"The Naked Time"
"The Galileo Seven"
"Arena"
"Space Seed"
"The Doomsday Machine"
"The Ultimate Computer"
"Spectre of the Gun"
"The Tholian Web"
"All Our Yesterdays"

And my picks for the five worst episodes:
"The Alternative Factor"
"Return to Tomorrow"
"The Omega Glory"
"And the Children Shall Lead"
"Requiem for Methuselah"

(and the one terrible episode that's so bad, it comes back around to become entertaining again: "Spock's Brain")

2008 in Review - The Best

Just before I'm completely irrelevant, here's my ten favorite movies from last year (including a couple that are technically 2007 titles, but whatevs).

First, my ten runners-up (#s 11-20):

20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
19. Be Kind Rewind
18. Encounters at the End of the World
17. Wall-E
16. Ballast
15. Wendy and Lucy
14. Stuck
13. Burn After Reading
12. Tropic Thunder
11. Let the Right One In

And the rest:

10. The Dark Knight. I think it might be a little bit of a mistake to read too deeply into this film as a profound statement on/ investigation of the ethics of a police state or the modern post-9/11 world, because the movie works a hell of a lot better as a finely-crafted state-of-the-art Hollywood blockbuster than as anything else.

9. Waltz with Bashir. The year's great dream/nightmare film, looking back on an intensely personal chapter in the life of the filmmaker (and his nation) in messy, unresolved, but stylish and honest terms.

8. Standard Operating Procedure. My favorite Errol Morris movie in a decade, this one peels back the layers of the Abu Ghraib media spectacle to reveal something deeper and more troubling - along with our own complicity.

7. The Band's Visit. A simple but profound cross-cultural fable, the kind of movie with a tagline that makes you want to barf ("Sometimes getting lost is the best way to find yourself") but in this case the filmmaking actually earns the right to it.

6. The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke gave my favorite performance of the year in this simple, scathing, heartfelt story of a man just trying to get by. Nice to see Darren Aronofsky reinvent himself as a filmmaker.

5. Happy-Go-Lucky. Mike Leigh's movies are always deeper than they look, this time framing a philosophical question about how one should lead their life within a quirky comedic character study.

4. The Class. No film this year had higher stakes - the clash at the center of this movie is for the minds of a classroom full of rowdy multiethnic French kids, to educate them and keep them engaged, as illustrated in the heartbreaking scene at the end of the movie where one girl tells her teacher she doesn't want to wind up at the bottom of society's ladder. The most human, inspirational movie of the year.

3. Synecdoche, New York. If The Class is about nurturing the possibilities of tomorrow, Synecdoche is about strangling the possibilities of today, something that we watch Caden Cotard do over decades of artistic yearning and personal failure - but with humor and pathos as only Charlie Kaufman can manage.

2. Man on Wire. A perfectly rendered caper movie, the artistic crime of the century, exuberantly rendered.

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. A nail-biting suspense movie, a scathing political indictment, the movie with the most frightening scene of the year (the final apocalyptic journey) and some of the driest was-that-even-a-joke moments (the lights getting turned on in the boyfriend's room). This movie had it all.

(Happy New Movie Year!)

2008 in Review - The Worst

Okay, so I think I've finally seen just about all of the movies I needed to catch up on for some good, serious list-making. And I also intend to actually write some reviews of the major releases from the last year over the course of this next month, to try and get some real content up here. But first, before we get to the good, the bad: my list of the Ten Worst Movies of 2008.

Now this is always a tricky list, first because a lot of people think that the end of the year should be about celebrating the good instead of rehashing the bad; and there's a point there, but I feel like the bad has to be properly acknowledged in order to truly be able to appreciate the good.

Also, a lot of "worst lists" are more about big Hollywood blockbusters that were disappointing or overblown, and as much as I thought the likes of Hancock or The Incredible Hulk were dumb or confused, they still had elements (scenes, performances, etc.) that I enjoyed or appreciated.

No, for me, below 'dumb' on the movie-rating scale is 'annoying' and below that is 'offensive' - but below that is 'boring', and below that, at the very bottom of the barrel, is 'all of the above', and those are the titles on this list.

Also, I never saw such movies as The Hottie and the Nottie, The Spirit, Meet the Spartans, The Love Guru, Saw V, and many more. So first, in alphabetical order, the runners-up, titles that I disliked, but weren't too bad:

Baby Mama - Lame and condescending, Tina Fey should know better.
Body of Lies - I'm less and less a fan of the brothers Scott, and their all-style, no-substance movies, every day - especially when they try to make 'relevant' movies about the War on Terror that only show how clueless they are.
The Foot Fist Way - Only redeemeed by an excellent performance from Danny McBride, this was the most amateurish, unpleasant comedy of the year.
Get Smart - Lame, and I'm learning to not expect good things from Steve Carell.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Speaks for itself, but at least it had Yeti.
Repo! The Genetic Opera - It has good cinematography, I swear.
Slumdog Millionaire - Offensive if for no other reason than because it wants to shove a soft, don't-worry-be-happy fatalism down our throats as an excuse for the crushing poverty on display.
The Tale of Despereaux - Pretty images in a big mess of a story.
Transsiberian - The most curiously tedious thriller of the year.
The Visitor - A big droopy diaper of liberal guilt, presented without nuance or complexity, partially redeemed by a good Richard Jenkins performance.

And now, the real dregs:

10. The Fall - A lot of people fell in love with this fantasy from Tarsem "Don't use my last name" Singh, but I saw it as an imcomplete vision, a familiar story relying on a few extravagant costumes and locations to tide us over - I'll take The Princess Bride, or even Tideland, over this. As an example of this movie's creative vision, the above is a coat worn by a character named 'Charles Darwin'.

9. Cassandra's Dream - Luckily for Woody Allen, his best movie in about a decade came quickly enough for everyone to forget about this, his worst movie in - well, ever, rehashing the same ideas from Match Point, which were already rehashed from Crimes and Misdemeanors, and with the stiffest, most stilted performances I've ever seen from Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell (and that includes Star Wars movies).

8. Twilight - Cultural regression away from the days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the female protagonist back in the role of submissive object for other, stronger forces to attack or protect, while she lays back, enjoying being the center of attention. The movie felt like the world's most tedious TV pilot.

7. Rambo - A huge lump of melted wax (Stallone) doesn't care about helping rebels in Burma until a bunch of white missionaries get in trouble, including a pretty blonde one - then shit starts to fly!

6. The Happening - Oh, The Happening, oh, sweet, sweet, The Happening. This movie is an exception to my 'boring' rule, because it goes all the way through and comes out the other side to become watchable again, like a clown car wreck. No other movie all year had as many "what they fuck were they thinking" moments, from the ludicrous dialogue ("We can't just stand here as uninvolved observers!") to the insane, needless violence (two kids blown away by shotguns!) to the terrible performances (Mark Wahlberg, clearly given no direction; Zooey Deschanel, gamely attempting hand gestures and strange facial reactions to fill in for dialogue that had never been written) to the batshit scene of a man pestering lions to eat his rubbery CGI arms - recorded on video and then uploaded to Youtube.

All of this could have made for a legitimately fun movie, except for the fact that M. Night Shyamalan clearly means for us to take the whole thing seriously as a profound and horrifying post-9/11 vision of a world gone mad, and his mammoth ego (and those who feed it) are what ultimately makes this one of the worst of the year.

5. Cloverfield - See above, although with fewer moments of delight to penetrate the dismal pretentiousness. I love the idea of a modern Godzilla tearing up a post-9/11 city - but you've gotta put people in the monster's path that I'm not eager to see eaten or stomped. One of the most insecure movies of the year for all of its forceful demands that we love these banal, self-centered youngsters. This movie is an insult.

4. 10,000 B.C. - Again, a movie that, in theory, could have been good, like a modern-day Quest for Fire-meets-Apocalypto-meets-The Egyptian - but instead we get filthy, dreadlocked Hollywood hotties chasing each other until they run into some Stargate aliens (not kidding).

3. Savage Grace - Sorry, John. Another movie that might have been interesting, but stuck with a meandering, focusless script, this degenerates into simple celebrity gossip-sploitation. This was shot in Spain, but for all the scenic vistas we get, it could have just as easily been Studio City.

2. Mirrors - At least director Alexandre Aja's previous films, High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, showed a command of kineticism and action to make up for the total inability to come up with anything for the actors to do - here, even that redemption is lost. And seriously, is there anyone who isn't already schizophrenic that's afraid of a frigging mirror?!

1. Prom Night - A little of everything: retrograde teen sexual politics, tired horror-movie cliches, actors given nothing to do, utter tedium.

The Muriels are Coming

I've been lucky enough (it certainly wasn't based on my prolific output) to be invited to participate in this year's Muriel Awards, which are organized by Paul Clark to honor the year's best films and filmmakers, by the most knowledgeable and opinionated people around: amateur movie bloggers (okay, there are some professionals in there too).

Among the awards given out are the 50th/25th/10th Anniversary Awards, for the best films released in 1958, 1983, and 1998 (based on New York release dates). Since those lists don't involve my frantically catching-up on 2008 titles before the deadline, here are my top-five lists for those respective years.

UPDATE 2/5/09:
Lists slightly revised to accomodate the actual rules of the Muriels - the movies are organized by actual release dates, not U.S. dates, so I'm removing Fanny and Alexander from my 1983 list since it's a 1982 film.

1958:
1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
2. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
3. Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati)
4. I Bury the Living (Albert Band)
5. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle)

1983:
1. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
2. Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio)
3. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
4. A Christmas Story (Bob Clark)
5. The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)

1998:
1. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
2. Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam)
4. The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)
5. Rushmore (Wes Anderson)

The Twenty-five Best Non-New Movies I Saw This Year

I still have a lot of watching to do before I can come up with a Best of 2008 list, but I'm reasonably comfortable in putting together this list of the best old movies that I saw for the first time this year. I'm especially proud to say thank you to the people at the New Beverly, the Silent Theater, the American Cinematheque, and the UCLA Archives, where I saw a lot of these.

First, in chronological order, the runners-up, numbers 11-20:

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961)
Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)
The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967)
Don't Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci, 1972)
Horror Express (Eugenio Martin, 1973) (watch this from 7:00 to 7:20 please)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
The Human Tornado (Cliff Roquemore, 1976)

And the top ten, also in chronological order:

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933) On one level, Lang's film is a critique of the nascent Nazi party taking control of Germany around him, but on another, more fundamental level, it's simply an insane adventure film, with some of the great director's most amazing images and sequences. My favorite image is this mind-boggling bit of nightmare fodder here.

The Earrings of Madame De... (Max Ophuls, 1953) An amazing, lush dissection of the social power networks of love and lust.

Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954) Sansho is the bad guy in this movie, a corrupt local Japanese magistrate who causes an immense amount of heartbreak and tragedy for an aristocratic family caught up in the tragedy of war. A total heartbreaker.

Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962) Pasolini's best film that doesn't involve coprophagy, this features Anna Magnani at her most volcanic and powerful.

Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) This is probably the supreme masterpiece on this list, an expansive vision of the place of man in modern consumerist society - and incredibly funny at the same time.

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967) A totally joyous, purely entertaining meta-musical filmed in glorious color with songs by Michel Legrand.

Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) The best, most uncompromising Pakula movie I've seen, another modernist vision of society corrupted by money and techology, with an amazing performance from Jane Fonda.

Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1972) This documentary about the lives of people who are both deaf and blind is all about the final scene, in which a profoundly isolated man, in the background of a shot, bumps into a tree and proceeds to spend a few minutes communing with the universe.

Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) Yeah, this is an Italian exploitation movie, but don't rush to judgment based on that. It's also a brutal critique of colonialism and one of the most purely misanthropic movies ever made. This one goes all the way.

Rosetta (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, 1999) It's easy to make a movie that critiques capitalism and modern life, not quite so easy to do so in a film centered on a mostly unlikeable female protagonist. The ending is absolutely astounding, a Polanski-esque black joke transformed into something transcendental.

And finally, the five most memorable bad movies I saw this year:

The Children (Max Kalmanowicz, 1980) A nuclear vapor leak causes all the children in a local town to become bloodthirsty zombies, only stoppable when the adults chop off their hands. An excerpt is here.

Mystics in Bali (H. Tjuy Djalil, 1981) In Indonesia, a young woman is researching tribal customs and she becomes the newest victim of the local witch, which means that at night, her head and internal organs lift off of her body to fly around and attack the local populace. See the best parts here.

Raw Force (Edward Murphy, 1982) Three guys from the Burbank Karate Club go on a cruise to east Asia and wind up battling a group of wicked monks and reanimated kung-fu zombies. Also featuring prostitutes, cannibalism, and jade smuggling.





The Carrier (Nathan J. White, 1988) I can't say enough about this movie, which feels like a completely personal, heartfelt expression of an utterly lunatic vision. A young man manages to infect his small town with a curious disease: anytime he touches an object, it becomes infected, and anytime someone else touches it, they start screaming and melting. Small animals can be used to detect the infection, resulting in an insane climactic scene in which two paranoid sects fight a battle for the local cats ("Cats or Death!" one tribal leader bellows) Seriously, look at this trailer and tell me it's not amazing.

Project: Metalbeast (Alessandro DeGaetano, 1995) Pretty bad, but this one involves a werewolf, frozen for decades by Barry Bostwick, which becomes the subject of a government experiment in 'metal skin' for defense purposes, which then results in (surprise) a werewolf with bullet-proof skin. What more do you need?

Stephen King's 2008 Top Ten List

As a big fan of Stephen King, it's always interesting for me to see what he thinks of the world of movies, he's a guy with very regular, everyman tastes that he expresses with great clarity and intelligence, even when I disagree with him, or when it looks like he just flat-out hasn't seen very many movies. Here's his list for this year, if you want all the specifics, but here's the simple top ten too:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Wall-E
4. Tropic Thunder
5. Funny Games
6. The Bank Job
7. Lakeview Terrace
8. The Ruins
9. Redbelt
10. Death Race

I haven't seen half of these - the only one that I know that I hate is the American Funny Games remake (nobody's perfect).

Another Alphabet List

Mostly due to boredom, I decided to put together this list of my least favorite, most hated movies for each letter of the alphabet. And believe me, there's a reason why the likes of Pearl Harbor and Saw IV aren't on this list - the selectees are just that awful. ALso, please note that my choice for Y is, in fact, a perfectly OK Italian giallo thriller which is significantly better than the rest of the movies listed. Consider yourself lucky that most of them are obscure exploitation movies.

Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
The Brick Dollhouse (1967)
Crazy Fat Ethel II (1987)
Doomsday Machine (1972)
Emperor of Kung Fu (1980)
The Fog (2005)
Girl Gang (1954)
The Head Mistress (1968)
Invasion USA (1952)
Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962)
Killers from Space (1954)










Laserblast (1978)
Monster A-Go Go (1965)
Nightmare in Wax (1969)
The Omega Code (1999)
Psyched by the 4-D Witch (1972)
Queen of Outer Space (1958)
Red Zone Cuba (1966)
Severe Visibility (2007)










Teenage Zombies (1959)
The Undead (1957)
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975)
XXX (2002)









Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)
Zombie Nightmare (1986)

My Alphabet Meme

Craig Kennedy of Living in Cinema was nice enough to invite me to participate in a communal blog game where each participant is supposed to pick their favorite movie for each letter of the alphabet. But of course, that would be too easy (and a little boring - gentlemen, we can't all pick Vertigo for 'V') so my list is 26 of my favorite B horror movies (sorry Jaws, no A-level productions here). Enjoy!

A is for Audition, of a Japanese girl most meek;
B is for Basket Case, a boxed-up lonely freak.

C is for Cat People - when horny, she turns feline;
D is for Dawn of the Dead, the mindless consumer decline.

E is for Eaten Alive, with Robert Englund as Buck;
F is for Final Destination, death by bad luck.

G is for Grindhouse, which too few went to see;
H is for Halloween, starring the mask of Kirk, James T.

I is for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a perfect paranoia pic;
J is for Jacob's Ladder, with a pre-Shyamalan trick.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space make mimes look sweet and gentle;
In The Little Shop of Horrors, it's the plant that makes Seymour go mental.

M is for Mad Love, with the brilliant Peter Lorre;
N is for Night of the Living Dead, the great, nightmarish, and gory.

O is for Onibaba, where samurai fall down a pit;
P is for Pulse, the American remake was shit.

Q: The Winged Serpent features a hungry Aztec god;
Re-Animator, meanwhile, explores the inner human bod.

S is for Street Trash, where bums are killed by booze;
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre family gets their meat through a tourist ruse.

U is for The Unknown, where Lon Chaney severs his arms;
V is for The Vampire Lovers, with Hammer's feminine charms.

W is for The Wizard of Gore, whose delayed slaughters entertain;
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes finally drives himself insane.

Les Yeux Sans Visage is the best I could find for a 'Y';
Lucio Fulci's Zombie drives wood through a woman's eye.

The Zombie makes a useful pet;
And he finishes up this alphabet.

(With apologies to Ogden Nash and the human race)

My 2008 Oscar Picks

It was a pretty good year not just for movies in general but for the Oscars: this year, there isn't a single movie nominated for Best Picture that I think is out-and-out bad, as with Crash in 2006 or The Hours in 2003. Even the weakest movie nominated this year, Juno, is pretty good, probably better than Little Miss Sunshine and definitely better than Ray or Seabiscuit. So anyway, here's my list of what I think will win and what I think should win:

Best Short Film, Animated/Live-Action:
I don't know, I don't really care. None of them could be as shitty as last year's Live-Action winner, West Bank Story. I think Madame Tutli-Putli is a good title so I'll root for it, and I hear The Mozart of Pickpockets is good so let's go with that.

Best Documentary, Feature/Short:
I regret to say that I haven't seen most of these either. I understand that No End in Sight is probably the best-made feature and while I liked Sicko, it was pretty flawed, so I have no dog in this race. Let's say No End in Sight and Freeheld.

Best Foreign Film:
Since such films as Persepolis, The Orphanage, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and more didn't make the cut, it means that I haven't seen any of the films nominated, which means: pick the film that involves Nazis, so here's to you, The Counterfeiters.

Best Animated Feature:
Ratatouille is by far the best of these. Persepolis could pull off an anti-Pixar upset, but why would Hollywood choose to pick on the only company that reliably produces films that are both profitable and high-quality?

Best Visual Effects:
Michael Bay designed and edited the robots in Transformers in such a way that you could never really get a good look at them, and since the Academy already awarded the effects team from Pirates 2, I figure they'll do it again for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Best Sound Editing/Mixing:
These could possible become part of a No Country for Old Men sweep, but I'm actually going to pull for the loud insanity of Transformers for one reason: sound mixer Kevin O'Connell is on his 20th nomination and the man's streak has to end sometime.

Best Original Song:
Oscar voters love their winners to have stories behind them, which is why I figure they'll pick "Falling Slowly" from Once.

Best Original Score:
I'd prefer for Michael Giacchino to win for Ratatouille after not even being nominated for The Incredibles, but Dario Marianelli will probably win for Atonement and that'll be just fine.

Best Makeup:
La Vie En Rose wins by being neither primarily digital (Pirates 3) nor part of a noxious movie (Norbit).

Best Editing:
The Academy tradition would be to include this as part of the Best Picture coattails, but I don't see the Academy giving an award to the fictional Roderick Jaynes, so instead Christopher Rouse will win for The Bourne Ultimatum, the film with the most editing.

Best Costume Design:
I'm going to say the Academy-traditional Atonement and that green dress, although it could just as easily be Sweeney Todd.

Best Art Direction:
This tends to go to lush period sets, so I don't see why they wouldn't give Dante Ferretti his second Oscar, for Sweeney Todd.

Best Cinematography:
Elswit won the ASC award, but I'm going to say that Oscar coattails outweigh vote-splitting and give Roger Deakins his much-deserved first Oscar for No Country for Old Men. He should get it for Jesse James instead, but who cares.

Best Original Screenplay:
I predict to be pissed off when Diablo Cody goes up to win her trophy for a movie that was rescued from its own screenplay by its director and cast. I'd love to see an upset from Tony Gilroy but my real favorite is Ratatouille.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
I have a feeling that this is where Paul Thomas Anderson gets his recognition, which is fine with me. If the Coens win, we know for sure what wins Best Picture.

Best Supporting Actor:
There's an outside chance for a Hal Holbrook upset, but it's almost certainly going to be Javier Bardem, as well it should.

Best Supporting Actress:
The year's most wide-open category, my preference is for Tilda Swinton but I have a feeling it'll go to awful mom Amy Ryan. Blanchett won just a few years ago, Ronan is too young, and Ruby Dee's role just isn't big enough.

Best Actor:
How can it not be Daniel Day-Lewis? In your face, David Poland's predictions from over a year ago.



Best Actress:
I'd love for Marion Cotillard to win, but it's very rare for a foreign-language performance to win here. Julie Christie is the likely winner, especially because she's an Academy veteran and her movie hits home with their voters, but I won't be shocked if Ellen Page upsets here.

Best Director:
Les Freres Coen.

Best Picture:
No Country for Old Men. While I have an idiosyncratic preference for the insular epic There Will Be Blood in this category and director, I won't be sorry at all if the Coens' lament in the form of a thriller takes the top price. I can imagine possible upsets from the popular Juno or the more Academy-friendly Atonement, but this seems to be the Coens' year.

The Worst Movies of 2007

I'll get to the Oscars shortly, but first, in response to the Razzies, here's my list of the worst movies of 2007:
Also, for the record, here's my list of the ten worst movies of last year:

10. Smokin' Aces: A bizarre mishmash and miscalculation from Joe Carnahan.

9. In the Valley of Elah: Paul Haggis's lastest was less obviously annoying than Crash, but just as pedantic and condescending.

8. 300: This homophobic and xenophobic screed was partially redeemed by its cutting-edge visuals.


7. Finishing the Game: The inevitable crappy successor to the great Christopher Guest movies of the last several years.

6. Norbit: Eddie Murphy's bare id, revealed for all the world to see as pathetically self-loathing and misanthropic.

5. The Hitcher: Your standard pointless horror remake, jazzed up by pointlessly beautiful cinematography from a music-video director.





4. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem: Your standard pointless sci-fi sequel, crudded up by dismal filmmaking and muddy cinematography.

3. The Reaping: This year's entry in the religious horror movie sweepstakes, which are always about proving the existence of God through fear and terror.

2. Saw IV: Lazy and badly made all the way around.

1. Severe Visibility: Nobody saw this 9/11 conspiracy movie, which is as it should be.








Hopefully I'll see fewer awful movies in 2008, although Cloverfield is an early contender for next year's list.