Kate Kraze.

"Oh G-d, who's the other one?"
- The gorgeous Kate Winslet congratulating, and forgetting, her fellow nominees upon winning her second Golden Globe of the night.

I never thought I'd feel so happy to see Meryl Streep, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Penélope Cruz and Anne Hathaway lose an award until they all lost to the lovely Kate Winslet.
When she first won Best Supporting Actress for her work in "The Reader" I realized she'd go and win 'em both (I'd predicted her for Drama Lead despite Hathaway-gate) and when Cameron Diaz gave her that look my heart stopped as Kate came to collect her Best Actress award for her brilliant performance in "Revolutionary Road".
And really she was the highlight of the show, one that had some of the worthiest winners I've seen in ages. Mickey Rourke and Colin Farrell got Best Actor in Drama and Comedy respectively and were in fact the best in their categories (toss up between Sean Penn and Rourke for me) and the lovely and extremely Amy Winehouse-like Sally Hawkins got Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy (who'd guess they're both so shy and quiet when in their professional lives they seem just so fiery?).
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" got Best Picture Musical or Comedy and that made my day despite Penélope losing, but back to Kate for a minute...
She single-handedly put some spice into this season again. Best Actress has been extremely tough to guess this year and with this double whammy what the hell will happen at the Oscars?
Ballots are due tomorrow so tonight won't have any effect anymore, but will the Academy also get her a double nod? And if so can she actually go ahead and win them both?
I shiver with excitement and if she eventually gets both awards the thing is that she would be perfectly capturing what seems to be the spirit of this awards season which is rooting ecstatically for your favorites.
Not only with Kate, but with Heath Ledger obviously and on the TV side this was captured perfectly with "30 Rock" and "John Adams" rightfully sweeping, but if a crossover appeal was ever more obvious it was "Slumdog Millionaire".
Whenever the nominees for the film were announced there was thunderous applause and cheering and each time it got an award the room just exploded.
When the film eventually won Best Picture-Drama and the camera captured Christina Applegate going "it's soooooo good" it was obvious that everyone there wanted this film to win.
There is no way this movie can lose that Oscar now. The energy of people who like it is contagious, even if I didn't love the movie I was happy it was winning things.
And don't even get me started about Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. They are just so cute and rootable (?).
They did this silly Bollywood dance class on the red carpet and instead of making me laugh at them I went "aww" and that is exactly what the movie is doing to everyone else.
Can it be so wrong that we have the need to share joy? And why is joy only as obvious in crowd pleasers?
The answers to those questions are too deep for tonight...for now I'll leave you with my favorite fashion of the night (ranked in no particular order).


Finally. What the hell is this?
I'm one of the only people who still likes her, but this is just impossible to defend.

Golden Globe Predictions.

If there's something we can thank the Hollywood Foreign Press for, besides the delicious way they get stars drunk, is that they often have the balls to do stuff Grandpa Oscar would only dream of.
Their choices for Best Picture can go from the silly to the groundbreaking and while they're starfuckers of the highest caliber they usually reward the best in their categories.
I don't think Meryl Streep will win anything tonight even if she's up for two, but if I had a request it would be for all the winners to ask her graciously to give their speeches for them or at least have her go through their notes before going up the podium.
Sigh, now I'm wishing she wins them all..

Best Motion Picture-Drama
Will win: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Should win: "Revolutionary Road"

"Slumdog Millionaire" might take it because it's been sweeping, but Globe voters might feel this is too happy to be in this category for starters. They've loved their epics in the past which is why it's easy to predict Benjamin for the win. But out of the nominees, Sam Mendes' film about marital discomfort is probably the best, a film that stays with you even if the first time it wasn't quite what you expected and even when you know it wasn't a masterpiece.
Can it be one of those movies that grows better with time? The Globes could want to say they predicted that before everyone else.

Best Actor-Drama
Will win: Mickey Rourke "The Wrestler"
Should win: Rourke or Sean Penn for "Milk"

The battle of the bad boys as Penn and Rourke take on a couple of sensitive dudes.
If I could hope for a tie, it would be for these two who are spectacular in a beautifully quiet way.
But if I have to put my money on one I guess Rourke is the comeback story and he's probably give a drunker speech.
Who cares if he was last good in the 80s? These people after all awarded Pia Zadora back then.

Best Actress-Drama
Will win: Kate Winslet "Revolutionary Road"
Should win: Kate Winslet "Revolutionary Road"

If that Anne Hathaway incident a few days ago wasn't an accident, then she deserves her award for her beautiful performance in "Rachel Getting Married". But I have chosen to take that as an html Freudian slip, the HFPA wants to award Hathaway but they owe it to Kate and guess what, unlike those overdue people she is breathtaking in "Revolutionary Road".
Even if it seems she's done the same role a million times before, her performance feels everything but old.

Best Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
Will win: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Should win: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

The Globes have a ball in this category because they never ever choose the one everyone expects (just look at last year for example). This year they might reward "Mamma Mia" because it was huge at the international box office, but the movie itself was mediocre at best. "Happy-Go-Lucky" which is a masterpiece might have a shot at it, but the award for its actress will be seen as an award for both categories. That leaves us with Woody Allen's luscious love letter to Barcelona, which beautifully combined sex, angst, heartbreak, food poisoning and murderous ex-wives and still made us crave to be a part of it.

Best Actor - Musical or Comedy
Will win: Dustin Hoffman "Last Chance Harvey"
Should win: Colin Farrell "In Bruges"

Farrell had a wonderful year with this and "Cassandra's Dream" where he proved that beyond the attitude, sex tapes and smoking we first got to know him as an actor.
I'm guessing he splits votes with his co-star Brendan Gleeson and we'll end with a sweet victory for the legendary Hoffman.

Best Actress - Musical or Comedy
Will win: Sally Hawkins "Happy-Go-Lucky"
Should win: Sally Hawkins "Happy-Go-Lucky", Rebecca Hall "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Poor Rebecca Hall had to go and give her brilliant performance the year Hawkins delivered one of the greatest performances of the decade in Mike Leigh's transcendental, beautiful ode to hope.
Watch out for Meryl Streep who danced and sang beautifully in "Mamma Mia", but the movie sucked and maybe the reward was proving once again she's G-d in actress form.

Best Supporting Actor:
Will win: Heath Ledger "The Dark Knight"
Should win: Heath Ledger "The Dark Knight"

I've made my peace with the fanboys and now I don't desire they get their asses kicked for their arrogance, so I agree with Ledger getting his posthumous reward.
Although I have to confess I did love Ralph Fiennes in "The Duchess" and thought Robert Downey Jr. was splendid in "Tropic Thunder".
Oh and Tom Cruise. Seriously?

Best Supporting Actress:
Will win: Penélope Cruz "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Should win: Penélope Cruz "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Not only is she a definition of what makes the HFPA, she also gave a ferocious, beautiful performance in Woody Allen's gorgeous film that nobody saw coming.

Best Director- Motion Picture
Will win: Danny Boyle "Slumdog Millionaire"
Should win: Sam Mendes "Revolutionary Road"

This one's pretty much a lock and the HFPA does love spreading the wealth.

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
Will win: Simon Beaufoy "Slumdog Millionaire"
Should win: Simon Beaufoy "Slumdog Millionaire"

I'm abstaining from passing judgement towards "The Reader" and "Doubt" because I haven't been lucky enough to watch them, so who knows if they might be good adaptations.
But with what I've got, Beaufoy's gimmicky narrative makes a much better story than whatever Eric Roth was thinking by grabbing Fitzgerald's moving and funny "Benjamin Button" and turning it into a cornier version of "Forrest Gump".
And as much as I love what Peter Morgan does to legendary leaders' biopics, "Frost/Nixon" annoyed me more than anything.

Best Foreign Language Film
Will win: "Gomorrah"
Should win: "Gomorrah"

Everyone stopped talking about "I've Loved You So Long" ages ago even if it's such a good film and "Waltz With Bashir" will feel like it's cheating in this category, so expect the Globes to go for Matteo Garrone's epic, brilliant mafia saga.

Best Animated Film
Will win: "WALL-E"
Should win: "WALL-E"

There's just no other way this can go.

Best Score
Will win: Alexander Desplat "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Should win: Desplar or A.H Rahman "Slumdog Millionaire"

Am I the only one tired that one of our greatest living composers is snubbed time after time after time? (He's only been nominated for an Oscar once!) His beautiful score for "Button" should do it, unless the voters are feeling more Bollywood.

Best Song
Will win: "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen from "The Wrestler"
Should win: "Down to Earth" by Peter Gabriel from "WALL-E"

If Bruce Springsteen or Peter Gabriel get it I'll be a happy camper, just keep this away from Miley Cyrus' "song" from "Bolt".

On the TV side expect "30 Rock" to sweep and Anna Paquin to join the ranks of Jennifer Garner and Keri Russell (babes who get the Globe during their freshman season) for her work in "True Blood".
And may we all get as drunk as the stars tonight. Happy Globes!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button **1/2

Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett
Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Elias Koteas, Jason Flemyng

There is something unnatural about watching a child die, which is why from the minute this film sets its premise you just know it's headed for a difficult place where you will be either deeply moved or disturbed.
Benjamin Button (Pitt) is a man who is born old and ages backwards, meaning that he will die young. As a baby, his father (Flemyng) conveniently abandons him in a nursing home where he is raised by Queenie (Henson in full Hattie McDaniel mode) who looks after the residents of the house.
He meets Daisy (Elle Fanning) with whom he develops a crush all the way until she becomes Cate Blanchett (who not so curiously gives the film's best performance).
The romance between Daisy and Benjamin is supposed to give the film its epic feel and while it certainly makes for some of the most compelling drama the plot offers it isn't completely able to shake off the awkwardness of the movie.
Penned by Eric Roth as an extension from F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, the screenplay takes only Fitzgerald's twist and crafts something completely new, a sort of requiem for the 20th century shaped after a classic Hollywood epic.
Roth who also wrote "Forrest Gump" seems to be the go-to-guy for stories about life-through-the-eyes-of-out-of-the-ordinary-men and with Benjamin is never able to justify what exactly makes the world through his eyes seem worthier than through anyone else's.
Why is the story relevant only when the narrator isn't ordinary if later the film will try to convince us that what matters the most is what we have inside?
The suspension of disbelief is awkward because the audience at first takes for granted the fact that nobody seems to make an issue out of Benjamin's situation.
Nobody ever thinks it's weird that a little girl and an old man are hiding under a table or that this same girl will grow old and have feelings for a child. If nobody makes a deal out of it, why to even use the gimmick, why not make Benjamin an average Joe?
Roth aims to make the doomed lovers approach the one that makes the story easy to sell, but with David Fincher directing this never materializes, especially because they never make it through to the fact that if it wasn't for the growing backwards novelty, there isn't much of a story to tell here.
With Claudio Miranda's cinematography which bathes everything in a golden fablesque light, the look of the film makes us view at the cruelty of death under a honey dipped innocence.
The movie also becomes a benchmark for visual effects and makeup (Pitt's entire performance is owed to these departments), as the digital process used to manipulate Pitt's look is pure cinema magic and we never doubt what we're seeing is actually happening.
Production wise, it's a real treat for the senses as every aspect is carefully taken care of, but at the center of it all lies a colliding contrast between what we watch and what we feel, or don't feel.
Fincher who is more cerebral becomes fascinated with the essence of time and visually makes a motif out of the way it passes us by (a beautiful prologue starring Elias Koteas encompasses what the latter two hours and forty minutes never come close to).
The director who is an expert at creating moods goes for the least expected road here and practically obsesses with the need to control time.
When the plot becomes too extensive, it's as if Fincher is so fascinated by controlling the lives of his characters that he just looks for more ways to manipulate their lives.
While in "Zodiac" he practically recreated the frustration of not getting where you want, in this movie his reluctance to accept the passing of time and what can be taken as fear of death makes him completely detach from his material. The film like Benjamin has the wrong soul in the wrong body.
While Roth is giving us conventional, somewhat contrived and lazy, storytelling (including tacky Hurricane Katrina references), Fincher is tackling on to the metaphysical so much that he refuses to even care for his characters.
What is the point if they too will go away once the projector stops running?

The Meryl Wins BFCA.

"I'm so happy my gums are receding."
Anne Hathaway quotes her screenwriter Jenny Lumet accepting her Best Actress award.

...but it's co-winner Anne Hathaway for "Rachel Getting Married" who steals the show for once.
"I don't know how to win awards, I know how to not be nominated for them" she says as she sets the bar for the kind of Julia Roberts speech that will get a voter or two picking her just to see how gracious, funny and natural she'd be up the podium.
This got me thinking about her performance in the movie which might count to some as deglam, but is in fact more of a study in subtlety.
She does right thanking her director as you know it was him who chose the quiet scenes where Kym just takes a punch at your gut (dancing with her eyes closed during the party, it should be her Oscar clip!).
I wasn't taking her chances so seriously but she makes sense in the way Academy voters have been making their choices lately and with no huge biopic contestant this year, it looks like the path might be clear for her, unless they have the sudden urge to be nice to the vastly underrated (yes she is...) Kate Winslet.
Now, if they'd only start taking Rosemarie DeWitt into consideration as well...if your Best Actress winner calls someone "incandescent, intelligent, loving, exquisite celluloid sister" you should be listening!

Gomorrah ***1/2

Director: Matteo Garrone
Cast: Toni Servillo, Salvatore Cantalupo, Nicolo Manta
Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone, Gianfelice Imparato, Carmine Paternoster

In its opening sequence "Gomorrah" states why it borrows its title from the infamous Biblical city when several mafia members are assassinated while they have manicures and instant tans, out of all things. With this combination of decadence and perdition the film sets its mood, but it cheats the audience because those expecting "fire and brimstone" in the end will be essentially disappointed.
Matteo Garrone chronicles the effect of the Camorra (organized crime) in Naples and Caserta through a mosaic consisting of five stories, which are interconnected but never intersect in the way we've come to see in recent films that reccur to this narrative style.
The stories involve people from all the circles of life: Don Ciro (Imparato), a middleman, who makes payments for imprisoned bosses finds himself in the middle of a raging war; in another one, 13 year old, Totò (Manta) becomes involved with a group of gang members who he wishes to join; Roberto (Paternoster) a recent college graduate becomes disappointed with his job as the assistant of businessman Franco (Servillo) who works in toxic waste management; Pasquale (Cantalupo) is a haute couture tailor who compromises loyalty to his company (as well as his artistry and trade) when he aides a rival Chinese mass producer; finally we have Marco (Macor) and Ciro (Petrone) two wannabe gangsters who steal a stash of weapons to make a reputation of their own.
There isn't much of a narrative to follow as "Gomorrah" becomes a sinister "slice of life" kind of film that suggests we could've started watching at any moment and still would get the same results in the end. Garrone's audatious style pays off in unexpected ways (there won't be instant gratification here) as he ends up weaving an epic tapestry that reveals the way in which crime has seeped under the very notions we have of society.
While Hollywood films have always romanticized the mafia, this film has absolutely no glamour and becomes almost vicious in its documentary like approach.
The gangsters here don't wear luxurious clothes or live in ivory towers, they wear flip flops and football team jerseys; death to them comes as an every day thing, which is why bullets here are as unexpected as they are effective.
The film was inspired by the best selling book written by Roberto Saviano, who revealed so much about the Camorra's practices that he has remained under police guard after the book was published.
Garrone takes this idea and gets really close to the action as well, his work with cinematographer Marco Onorato captures this reality as something urgent. The places where the camera is placed suggest it might be the eyes of one of the mafia members because the plot unfolds from within.
The idea that the police or the government will become involved at some moment isn't of concern to the characters here who have become members of an unofficial system.
Still there is haunting beauty to the film, which takes a Neorrealist aesthetic that somehow still manages to feel detached.
Most of the scenes are accompanied by an eerie silence that scares because we never know what to expect. But don't confuse this with suspense, it's just that the we're nothing but foreigners in this land, the people who live there probably don't even notice this.
The scariest thing about "Gomorrah" is that you can't deny there is a certain kind of lawfulness to the way these people live; they all know the set of rules and should live in accordance to them.
For those who don't, like the main characters in each of the stories, the consequences come as no surprise and the idea that they chose to defy these rules makes them seem stupid.
In this way Garrone succeeds, because while he doesn't make the violence justifiable, he makes it understandable within its context.
In the trademark sequence Marco and Ciro fire machine guns in a desolated river, the camera captures their playfulness as if they were little kids building sand castles, they might be criminals but they have not been depraved of their humanity.
For the people in "Gomorrah" death and crime have become the norm.

BFCA Predicts the Oscars.

The Critics Choice Awards were held tonight and as their main goal and whole raison d'etre seems to predict who will win the Oscars they went with most of the favorites.
Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score went to "Slumdog Millionaire" as well as their bizarre juvenile award (which went to Dev Patel).
Heath Ledger paved his way to the Oscars (they just won't resist the need for a standing ovation) winning Best Supporting Actor and Kate Winslet was a sorta unexpected winner for Best Supporting Actress in "The Reader".
This award interests me a lot, because not only am I rooting for Penélope Cruz as anyone who reads me knows by now, (I've yet to see Winslet's film though...) but it might be one of those awards overdue actors get.
Like the time when Cate Blanchett won for "The Aviator" (who also happened to be terrific in her movie), it's like one of those "rules" that say give them the supporting award because they're never getting the lead one, unless you're Al Pacino.
Proving they need to force themselves as Oscar pronosticators Best Actress was a tie and went to Meryl Streep for "Doubt" who is the one everyone thinks should win and Anne Hathaway for "Rachel Getting Married" which is the one horny Academy award members would choose.
See, the BFCA isn't as frisky with ties as AMPAS, but I don't see this happening ever again.
As usual, once the BFCA show is over we're still left with the same old questions and boredom as before.
Bring the Globes on!

It's a Sealed Deal.

The Directors Guild of America has announced its nominees for the year 2008.
Lo and behold as they are exactly the same nominees everyone expected and that everyone is bored of listening about.

David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Christopher Nolan, "The Dark Knight"
Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"
Gus Van Sant, "Milk"
Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire"

A respectable list absolutely, but really were these the only five movies worthy of awards last year?
I can not only think of at least ten better directed movies than "Frost/Nixon", but the fact that this movie is getting the "everyone nominates but has no chance of winning" slot makes me bored about how people have been voting like cattle.
Before the Oscar nominations come out (just 14 days left...) I'd love for these people to see their screeners and actually grow a unique voice.
If this will be our Best Picture, Best Director lineup count me in for bored as hell, I'll just tune in on February 22nd to watch Hugh Jackman sing and Penélope Cruz's speech.

Bolt **

Director: Byron Howard, Chris Williams

Bolt is like the 21st century version of Rin-Tin-Tin; geared with super canine powers and undying loyalty towards his master Penny he's always ready to battle the evil Dr. Calico and save the day.
At least until the director yells "cut" because Bolt is the star of a television show, something which he has no idea of. Everyone in the show makes sure that Bolt believes everything in the show is real, including his superpowers,
When network executives demand the show worries more about the feared 18-35 demographic, a cliffhanger that involves Penny being kidnapped sets Bolt loose on a cross country adventure where he does everything to reunite with his "person".
The film is the kind of family friendly fluff we've come to expect from Disney sans-Pixar which have become great looking, fun to watch, with a slight edge but without any transcendence.
"Bolt" features some truly breathtaking animation (the action scenes are better than most things released during the summer season) and the characters are homogeneously likable.
But the movie often turns too referential, something that has arguably become a thorn in the back of recent CGI animated films, instead of focusing on more timeless values to be funny or touching.
And at the center of everything is a conflict of interest between the message it sends out and the one it wants to send, because after glamorizing Hollywood life (every little kid watching this will want their pet to shoot laser beams out of their eyes when they get home) regardless of whether it's in a show or in real life and then the movie comes and demonizes the shallowness and lack of love within the industry.
If it can point fingers so easily why do we never find out how did Penny and Bolt get in the TV show in the first place?
For the whole movie to have happened, and its message of the evil in corporations who deem creatures as disposable, to have worked, we should trust Penny all the way through and truth is that it's hard to believe someone who forces her dog into Method acting for who knows what reason would mind him getting lost.
You can't even blame the studio mom this time (Penny's mom is actually a very ineffective, passive character) but hey if the kids don't notice it, maybe the fun action and facile laughs will suffice.

Slumdog Millionaire ***

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto
Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan

Sitting on the brink of obtaining the ultimate prize in the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", there is only one thing 18 year old Jamal (the charming, in an Aladdin kind of way, Patel) knows for sure: he doesn't belong there. Or does he?
The same facts might be applicable to the film itself, which could muster screams of "sell out" if its existence wasn't so rooted in traditional Hollywood values which we've come to accept as "universal". A fairy tale with a social twist.
After growing up in a slum, having seen his mother killed by an anti-Muslim mob and running away from a gangster out to murder him Jamal is an unlikely choice to become a millionaire, which is why he's arrested after his first day on the show and questioned by a police inspector (the wonderful Khan) who suspects him of cheating.
Using this premise director Danny Boyle fashions a Dickensian tale about life, love and destiny using Jamal's past as the source of his correct answers.
The plot travels between the game, the police interrogation and Jamal's experiences which include his relationship with his troubled brother Salim (Mittal), his undying love for Latika (the luminous Pinto) and his ever present struggle for survival.
Boyle, of zombies and junkies fame, had never made a film with such mainstream intentions and whenever the story hurts the movie, the energy which Boyle puts into each of his projects makes it worthy.
With Anthony Dod Mantle's camera he gets right into the slums in Mumbai giving the visuals the labyrinthine dazzle the plot unsuccessfully aims for.
If there's another thing we've come to learn from films set in India, is that everything will look "exotic" and "vibrant" and Boyle follows the same path (even using a Bollywood meets hip hop score by A.R. Rahman which like everything else in the film wins over you even if you're aware of its contrivedness).
The film bursts with color and texture, or what we can perceive with Chris Dickens' hyperactive editing.
Despite its somewhat traditional style with which Boyle never encompasses the meaningfulness behind the poverty other than for dramatic backdrop purposes, the film's most complex matter lies in how it unconsciously captures a fast changing country.
This isn't the India of E.M Forster's "Passage" or the romanticized version of Bollywood musicals, but a country violently steering towards the nonexistent limbo between the third world and industrialization.
An India where luxury cars travel on unpaved roads, where people earning extremely low wages build the apartment complexes movie stars will inhabit.
Where call center employees solve problems for strangers across the globe and where gangsters roam the streets and become role models.
But for all the hardship, violence and tragedy shown, Boyle reminds us that it all has a purpose.
With his "suffering as means to heaven" theory he justifies viciousness and makes it easy for the audience to swallow child abuse, prostitution and human beings bathed in feces.
Boyle proves that he is a great manipulator and you have to ask yourself how do you make this manipulation work?
Is the director so efficient that he knows what buttons to push in his viewers in order to obtain certain emotions or is the film working at such a primordial level because of the historical context it's being released in?
Would "Slumdong Millionaire" have worked in a world without economic recession, war, environment chaos and hopelessness?
Is the movie a cause of this or an antidote? If Boyle had been a little bit less Spielberg and a bit more Rossellini he would've helped the film find answers within itself.
Because when it works, this movie convinces us that its success is written, but because it lets the bolts and screws behind its machinery show it leads to a different kind of realization.
When the movie starts it asks the audience if Jamal's success is due to cheating, luck, genius or fate, at the end when the film chooses to answer this for us we're on to its game.
It justifies its laziness with the premise that everything is "written" (which it obviously is considering this is a film and films come from screenplays and screenplays are written...) but its attempts at cosmic relevance prove that actually it's greatly underwritten and it shows.
However the truth is that "Slumdog Millionaire" believes, or rather buys, its own message so much that you don't know how to contradict it.
But like the rush you got watching the "Millionaire" show and rooting for a complete stranger, once you turn the television off you're left with nothing.

Words in the Foreign Language.