Momentary Language

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are:

- “Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (20th Century Fox) Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer; Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips
- “Children of Men” (Universal) Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
- “The Departed” (Warner Bros.) Screenplay by William Monahan
- “Little Children” (New Line) Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta
- “Notes on a Scandal” (Fox Searchlight) Screenplay by Patrick Marber

And the winner is ... Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby for "Children of Men"!

I know, I know ... I loved the Borat movie, but most of its scenes were unscripted, so it seems odd to give it the award for best adapted screenplay. I found "Notes on a Scandal" to be bizarrely misogynistic and homophobic -- not to mention full of utterly unsympathetic and irredeemable characters. (I haven't yet seen "Little Children"; given what I know of Field & Perrotta, both of whom I love, I might otherwise have given it the nod.)

P.S. This is great ... how many movie websites have links to commentary by Slavoj Žižek?

Best Performance By An Actress In A Leading Role

The nominees are:

- Penélope Cruz in “Volver” (Sony Pictures Classics)
- Judi Dench in “Notes on a Scandal” (Fox Searchlight)
- Helen Mirren in “The Queen” (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)
- Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” (20th Century Fox)
- Kate Winslet in “Little Children” (New Line)

(Wow! I've actually seen all of these except for "Little Children"!)

And the Oscar goes to ... Helen Mirren!

This one was really a toss-up. Cruz, Dench, and Mirren were all amazing. In my opinion, "The Queen" was the strongest move of "Volver," "Notes on a Scandal," and "The Queen," and since Mirren's performance was the foundation of that movie's success, I'm giving the nod to her.

A work of "overindulged, seductive, feline opulence"

Maybe I'm just a sucker for works of art that "stretch [their] beauty before us with overindulged, seductive, feline opulence," or maybe it's just that the incredibly filmic International Style Tempelhof Airport in Berlin seems to have found an auteur adequate to the task of setting it in celluloid -- regardless, I can't wait to see Eve Sussman's new work, "The Rape of the Sabine Women."

As described in Roberta Smith's review in today's Times,

“The Rape of the Sabine Women” is dense, lavish and drawn out. It is larded with art historical references, startling juxtapositions and brilliant camera work and enriched by the faces, bodies, movements and general sexiness of a tribe of handsome young actors. Intricately edited, it jumps back and forth in time and alternates between color and black-and-white scenes, sharp and grainy definition, slow-motion and normal speed. Cinematic space deepens and then flattens. We see the actors in character, but also in their dressing rooms; we also glimpse cameras, crews and the musicians.

Most notably, all dialogue is replaced by an amazing original score by Jonathan Bepler. He worked with a host of musicians and singers, who sometimes improvised during filming. The heady weaving of sound and image is the work’s greatest strength.

It sounds like a performance that is almost operatic in its opulence and self-indulgence. Brava!

Best Performance By An Actor In A Leading Role

The nominees are:

- Leonardo DiCaprio in “Blood Diamond” (Warner Bros.)
- Ryan Gosling in “Half Nelson” (THINKFilm)
- Peter O’Toole in “Venus” (Miramax, Filmfour and UK Film Council)
- Will Smith in “The Pursuit of Happyness” (Sony Pictures Releasing)
- Forest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland” (Fox Searchlight)

And the winner is ... Forest Whitaker. Yes, Ryan Gosling was awe-inspiring as the crack-addicted history teacher in "Half Nelson," and I would love to give him the nod, but Forest Whitaker was positively electric as Idi Amin; I couldn't take my eyes off of him whenever he was on the screen. It was an incredible performance.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

The nominees are:

- Alan Arkin in “Little Miss Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight)
- Jackie Earle Haley in “Little Children” (New Line)
- Djimon Hounsou in “Blood Diamond” (Warner Bros.)
- Eddie Murphy in “Dreamgirls” (DreamWorks and Paramount)
- Mark Wahlberg in “The Departed” (Warner Bros.)

The award goes to ... Djimon Hounsou. (C'mon, people! Eddie Murphy deserves to be shut out of Oscar consideration for "Norbit" alone!)

And the winner is ...

In honor of the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony next Sunday, I'll be posting my own picks this week, beginning this evening with the award for best actress in a supporting role.

And the nominees are ...

- Adriana Barraza in “Babel” (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
- Cate Blanchett in “Notes on a Scandal” (Fox Searchlight)
- Abigail Breslin in “Little Miss Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight)
- Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls” (DreamWorks and Paramount)
- Rinko Kikuchi in “Babel” (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)

And the Academy Award goes to ... Abigail Breslin! Without Breslin's utterly believable performance -- quirky yet pure, sweet without ever veering into the saccharine, "Little Miss Sunshine" would've been a movie without a center. Breslin's portrayal of Olive gave the movie its heart.

[Not having seen "Babel" or "Dreamgirls," I might not seem the ideal person to vote for this award. Since it doesn't stop the actual Academy voters, however, I didn't see why it ought to stop me.]

Play it again, Max

The most unexpected, yet delightful, news in today's Times was the review of "Burning Annie," a film by Zack Ordynans, Randy Mack and Van Flesher that does for Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" what Woody himself did for the persona that Humphrey Bogart perfected in films like "Casablanca" and "The Maltese Falcon" with "Play it Again, Sam."

"nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands"

While procrastinating with the aid of a television remote, I happened upon "Hannah and her Sisters" (the entire script is here) on TCM. Being the Woody Allen fanatic that I am (actually, make that early- to mid-period Woody fanatic; anything after "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is hit-or-miss, in my opinion), I'd seen "Hannah" many times, of course. However, I can't recall being as struck by the e.e. cummings poem that Elliot (the Michael Caine character) recommends to Lee (the Barbara Hershey character) as I was on this viewing; this time, I was blown away. Here's the poem:

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Nice, isn't it?

The best movie of 2006

I saw Children of Men tonight; it was, in my humble opinion, the best film of 2006. (Humble, and at least somewhat uninformed -- recall that I have yet to see either of Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima films ... nor have I yet seen Happy Feet.)

I'll let J. Hoberman of the Village Voice set the stage. (The entirety of Hoberman's review is here.) Hoberman begins recounting the plot of the movie by praising

the intelligent path Children of Men takes through James's 1992 novel, preserving while enriching her allegorical premise. Humanity is facing its own extinction—not through nuclear proliferation or global warming, but the end of fertility. Like James's book, the movie opens with the violent death of the world's youngest person (18-year-old "Baby Diego," stabbed by an irate fan in Buenos Aires) and imagines what might happen if the human race were granted a miraculous second chance. ...

The year is 2027 but the mood is late 1940. "The world has collapsed," a BBC newsreader explains. "Only Britain soldiers on"—barely. The U.K. is a mecca for illegal immigrants, as well as a bastion of neo-fascist homeland security. London's smog-shrouded smear of garbage, graffiti, and motorcycle rickshaws is the shabbiest of havens. Armed cops are ubiquitous, and refugees—or 'fugees—are locked up in curbside cages. Religious cultists parade through the streets. Terrorists and looters control the despoiled landscape poignantly dotted with long-abandoned schools.

Enormously sympathetic, as always, Owen plays a wry and rumpled joker—less an actual character than a nexus of connections. His ex-wife (Julianne Moore) is an underground revolutionary; his buddy (Michael Caine) is a scene-stealing old hippie with a secret house in the woods. He has a well-off cousin in the government (Danny Huston) who lives in what looks like a South Bank power station amid recovered artworks, including Michelangelo's David (missing a leg) and Picasso's Guernica, and no longer worries about tomorrow. Owen's warmth is such that everyone trusts him, including animals and a mysterious young woman (Clare-Hope Ashitey) who needs to be smuggled through the countryside.

The feel of the movie is flawlessly rendered ... even down to the tattered "London 2012" sweatshirt, a memento of the Olympic games, that Clive Owen's character wears as he careens from the Baghdad of London, 2027, which -- like its counterpart in the fertile crescent -- also seems to be divided into Red and Green Zones, to a Gitmo-like refugee detention camp, and finally to an urban battleground that recalls any of the hot zones in Al Anbar province over the past 3 years.

I'll post more on the film in a day or two, but I just wanted to waste no time in encouraging everyone to see it. If you don't take my word for it, here are Manohla Dargis, Anthony Lane, and David Ansen to add their two cents.

Ingmar Bergman Face to Face

Film-buffs won't want to miss the exemplary website of the Ingmar Bergman Archive.

For an introductory example of the richness of the archive's freely accessible web-holdings, check out the site for The Seventh Seal, which includes video from the film as well as video of an interview with Bergman on the film.