14 out of 24...

My worst Oscar showing ever, well below our group winner, Sydney Smith, with 19 correct. How bad was it? So bad that Lora, who basically guessed eeny-meeny style, tied me. That's bad.

Where did I go wrong? And right? Breakdowns follow in italics.

BEST PICTURE

A tough one this year, in a race where there are no nags, but no thoroughbreds, either, save for The Queen, which seems an also-ran to win. I have no strong feelings for any of the five films nominated, and while a mild discomfort will come over me if Babel wins so be it. (I've made my peace with Little Miss Sunshine winning.) I watched The Departed again and agree with Lora's assessment, that it's no more, and no less, "good entertainment." Martin Scorsese's own assessment, that it's a "B-movie" and meant as film buff praise, is spot-on, too. His likely, long-coming win could just put it over the top, so let's say:

My prediction: The Departed
My choice: The Queen

As soon as it won for Screenplay, I knew I'd bagged it--but I should have trusted it for editing, too. I find myself more relieved than I thought that neither Babel nor Little Miss Sunshine claimed top honors.

BEST ACTOR

I don't see anything interrupting Forest Whitaker's Last King of Scotland momentum. This does pain me a little; it's a solid but unexciting and depthless performance in a mediocre movie very few people outside of critics' circles have seen. I would go so far as to say that it's the weakest of the four nominated performances I did see (sorry, Will Smith). But there it is.

My prediction: Forest Whitaker
My choice: Leonardo DiCaprio (an underrated effort in the best of the Africa pictures to date, Blood Diamond. He's also fine in The Departed.)

Not happy with it, but I did score a point.

BEST ACTRESS

No doubt about it: My long-time favorite, Helen Mirren, will be touched by gold this year, a remarkable 2006 for any performer and in this instance against competition that would have been fearsome had she not so thoroughly invested herself in her performance. Naysayers can Netflix the one 2006 credit likely to disappear from her resume, the bizarre Shadowboxer, in which she hangs with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Macy Gray, and Mo'Nique.

Prediction and choice: Mirren

No kidding. Anyone who voted aginst her should be disqualified from Oscar pools.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

No one likes him. He doesn't like anyone. He doesn't care. Norbit sucks. But at the end of the day Eddie Murphy, a reliable Hollywood hitmaker (despite a few misses, Norbit not one of them where the boxoffice is concerned) for a quarter-century, will win and should for his outstanding Dreamgirls portrayal, a fuller, richer role than the others. I'm a big Alan Arkin fan, too, and can't rule out old-timer sentiment, but he's risen to significantly greater challenges in under-the-radar releases (like Slums of Beverly Hills and 13 Conversations About One Thing) that Oscar never saw.

Prediction and choice: Murphy

Happy for Arkin. Nice guys, or, at least, nice guys who maintain an illusion of being nice guys, do finish first. But Murphy was the stronger performer and the blogger "takedowns" of him unseemly, to say the least.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

See above. I can't believe an American Idol contestant is about to win an Oscar, either, but Jennifer Hudson had the golden part and nailed it to the floor. What next for her, I wonder?

Prediction and choice: Hudson

She told you she wasn't going, and she didn't.

BEST DIRECTOR

At long last, the stars are in alignment, and Martin Scorsese will get the Oscar that should have been his many years ago, certainly for Goodfellas; really, it's a stain on the Academy's reputation that he hasn't gotten something for his commendable work on film preservation, which is more the mission of the organization than other causes. True, The Departed is not his best work, but better him winning for this than another actor-turned-director winning in his rightful place the next time.

Prediction and choice: Scorsese

Slam dunk. Made the near four-hour telecast worth wading through.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

A strong field, with the exception of Borat, not that it's not good, but because its improvisatory nature doesn't really fit either screenwriting category. Notes on a Scandal is a superior adaptation; my problem with Little Children was more the material, and I see more love for Children of Men in the technical categories than in the top tier. So I'll go with The Departed.

Prediction: The Departed
Choice: Notes on a Scandal

Slobby-looking New York Press writer makes good. There is hope for all low-paid hacks.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

If Little Miss Sunshine is to win something, it's this. I'm still not convinced that it's such great writing but it's clearly struck some sort of chord, which counts for a lot. Me, I'll go with The Queen, another case of an artist (in this case, writer Peter Morgan) having a banner year (his other credits were The Last King of Scotland, the good HBO/BBC film Longford, and the Broadway-bound Frost/Nixon.)

Prediction: Little Miss Sunshine
Choice: The Queen

Too bad Best Picture rained on your Sunshine parade, nah-nah. That it won the Independent Spirit Award shows how safe and commodified independent films have become.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Pixar has I think run out of gas with Cars. Monster House is charming but has no resonance. The inclusion of A Scanner Darkly might have made this a horse race but honoring the delightful Happy Feet is a) worthwhile and b) a way to reward its maker, George Miller, the director of fine, idiosyncratic films that include Babe, the Mad Max trilogy, and Lorenzo's Oil.

Prediction and choice: Happy Feet

As it should have been.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

This is another competitive field, but I still place Pan's Labyrinth above the rest. As it's also the highest-grossing Spanish-language release in this country I think attention must be paid. An Oscars where Scorsese, Miller, and Guillermo Del Toro walk away with Oscars is not a bad thing.

Prediction and choice: Pan's Labyrinth

Let's amend that: An Oscars where Scorsese and Miller walk away with Oscars is not a bad thing. And I'll remind you of a comment I made elsewhere about Lives of Others, that it was "just sentimental enough to win the Oscar." Indeed. That Pan's Labyrinth, which really upset my scoring totals applecart, faded here indicates, once again, that the Academy just cannot fully commit to fantasy filmmaking.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

With no less than three nominees from Dreamgirls, you can predict that either one will win, or they'll cancel each other out. I suspect the former and think that Beyonce's big number, "Listen," will grab the gold.

Prediction and choice: "Listen"

Wrong again. I like Melissa Etheridge, but this is a tired breast-beater and tree-hugger.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The best score I heard all last year was Alexandre Desplat's sublime, Satie-inspired work for The Painted Veil. Naturally, it wasn't nominated. But I think voters will hail his compositions from The Queen instead. None of these really stood out, with The Good German and Notes on a Scandal rather obvious scores.

Prediction and choice: The Queen

A yawner of a category, with the same plaintive plinking that won Oscar gold last year doing so again.

BEST FILM EDITING

In a perfect world, the cinematography and the editing of Children of Men would be considered in tandem; the cinematography for its long, unbroken, exquisite tracking shots, and the editing for demarcating them just so. But I have a feeling the clumsy, sentimental transitions in the multi-story Babel will win the day and to hell with subtlety.

Prediction: Babel
Choice: Children of Men

Good on Thelma Schoonmaker for beating Babel; my bad for choosing Children of Men.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Children of Men had everyone talking, and that should last through tomorrow night. And Emmanuel Lubezki ("Chivo") is a nice guy.

Prediction and choice: Children of Men

By far the evening's biggest upset. The Academy really doesn't go the ASC's way. Not that Pan's Labyrinth isn't well-shot but Chivo's achievement is just so much stronger. I feel for him.

BEST ART DIRECTION
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
BEST SOUND MIXING

I'm either going to be very lazy, very arrogant, or very dumb, but I predict a Dreamgirls sweep in all three of these categories, and deservedly so; all three elements help convey the story through changing times and moods. But in costumes I do favor The Devil Wears Prada, for very sharply defining the characters.

Predictions and two choices: Dreamgirls
Costume design choice: The Devil Wears Prada

Another ship that failed to come in, save for Sound Mixing. But I'm still comfortable with having made that choice.

BEST SOUND EDITING

With the same two nominees up for Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, I figure they'll score with the more acclaimed Letters, which is more subtly edited than the other choices. They're just loud and/or tend toward bombast, like most nominees in the sound categories.

Prediction and choice: Letters from Iwo Jima

Good guess.

BEST MAKEUP

An easy win for the fantasy-laden Pan's Labyrinth. Apocalypto? Click? Click? Get real.

Prediction and choice: Pan's Labyrinth

Yep.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Another cakewalk, for Davy Jones' octo-face and the Kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Poseidon is another inexplicable nominee.

Prediction and choice: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Yep.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:

If you really think lefty Hollywood won't give Al Gore a crack at the podium, you've got another think coming. Another easy call, for An Inconvenient Truth, which I didn't see. But I doubt it has half the artistry of the beautifully made and moving Iraq in Fragments.

Prediction: An Inconvenient Truth
Choice: Iraq in Fragments

The Al and Leo banter was cute.

Lest we think this is too easy, it's the final three categories, which go unremarked upon in most Oscar roundups, that tend to throw everyone off. Best Documentary Shorts tend to favor hot-button topics. My Oscar-watching friends see the Best Animated Shorts and Best Live Action Shorts programs, but as they will attest that doesn't really help. These categories work in mysterious ways and cost valued points. The New York Times is as good a resource as any, and a couple of other publications are breaking the same way, so I'm going to predict The Blood of Yingzhou District for Documentary Short (AIDS in China), The Little Matchgirl for Animated Short, and Binta and the Great Idea (Africa-themed) for Live Action Short. Not having seen any of these, I have no choices, just guesses. But I hear some are on YouTube, an ideal venue for them.

That's what I get for trusting the Times' "Bagger." Only one was in the bag, and that was my own inclination. My friends say none were outstanding.

Our tie-breaking question this year is, "How many winners will thank God?" My answer is, four. I pray that I'm right.

Half-right. Just two: Hudson and Whitaker. And that was the Oscars that was.

The gold rush

Is it really Oscar time again? Granted that "Oscar time" seems to be a perpetual condition anymore, with the 2007 cycle of statuette blogging due to start on Monday once the dust has settled over 2006. But here it is, and I note that Oscar fever in part inspired me to start this blog almost a year ago, so the condition is catching.

Now to attend to my ballot. I just found last year's, in crumpled condition, among a stack of papers, and surely I can improve upon last year's dismal total of 16 out of 24 categories correct. (My personal best, and only the second time I had won in a pool that I've been a part of for 12 years now, was 22 for 24 in 2003, the year Return of the King swept the night.) My real time choices, with annotations, follow.

BEST PICTURE

A tough one this year, in a race where there are no nags, but no thoroughbreds, either, save for The Queen, which seems an also-ran to win. I have no strong feelings for any of the five films nominated, and while a mild discomfort will come over me if Babel wins so be it. (I've made my peace with Little Miss Sunshine winning.) I watched The Departed again and agree with Lora's assessment, that it's no more, and no less, "good entertainment." Martin Scorsese's own assessment, that it's a "B-movie" and meant as film buff praise, is spot-on, too. His likely, long-coming win could just put it over the top, so let's say:

My prediction: The Departed
My choice: The Queen

BEST ACTOR

I don't see anything interrupting Forest Whitaker's Last King of Scotland momentum. This does pain me a little; it's a solid but unexciting and depthless performance in a mediocre movie very few people outside of critics' circles have seen. I would go so far as to say that it's the weakest of the four nominated performances I did see (sorry, Will Smith). But there it is.

My prediction: Forest Whitaker
My choice: Leonardo DiCaprio (an underrated effort in the best of the Africa pictures to date, Blood Diamond. He's also fine in The Departed.)

BEST ACTRESS

No doubt about it: My long-time favorite, Helen Mirren, will be touched by gold this year, a remarkable 2006 for any performer and in this instance against competition that would have been fearsome had she not so thoroughly invested herself in her performance. Naysayers can Netflix the one 2006 credit likely to disappear from her resume, the bizarre Shadowboxer, in which she hangs with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Macy Gray, and Mo'Nique.

Prediction and choice: Mirren

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

No one likes him. He doesn't like anyone. He doesn't care. Norbit sucks. But at the end of the day Eddie Murphy, a reliable Hollywood hitmaker (despite a few misses, Norbit not one of them where the boxoffice is concerned) for a quarter-century, will win and should for his outstanding Dreamgirls portrayal, a fuller, richer role than the others. I'm a big Alan Arkin fan, too, and can't rule out old-timer sentiment, but he's risen to significantly greater challenges in under-the-radar releases (like Slums of Beverly Hills and 13 Conversations About One Thing) that Oscar never saw.

Prediction and choice: Murphy

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

See above. I can't believe an American Idol contestant is about to win an Oscar, either, but Jennifer Hudson had the golden part and nailed it to the floor. What next for her, I wonder?

Prediction and choice: Hudson

BEST DIRECTOR

At long last, the stars are in alignment, and Martin Scorsese will get the Oscar that should have been his many years ago, certainly for Goodfellas; really, it's a stain on the Academy's reputation that he hasn't gotten something for his commendable work on film preservation, which is more the mission of the organization than other causes. True, The Departed is not his best work, but better him winning for this than another actor-turned-director winning in his rightful place the next time.

Prediction and choice: Scorsese

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

A strong field, with the exception of Borat, not that it's not good, but because its improvisatory nature doesn't really fit either screenwriting category. Notes on a Scandal is a superior adaptation; my problem with Little Children was more the material, and I see more love for Children of Men in the technical categories than in the top tier. So I'll go with The Departed.

Prediction: The Departed
Choice: Notes on a Scandal, on the cover of the Spring issue of Cineaste, below

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

If Little Miss Sunshine is to win something, it's this. I'm still not convinced that it's such great writing but it's clearly struck some sort of chord, which counts for a lot. Me, I'll go with The Queen, another case of an artist (in this case, writer Peter Morgan) having a banner year (his other credits were The Last King of Scotland, the good HBO/BBC film Longford, and the Broadway-bound Frost/Nixon.)

Prediction: Little Miss Sunshine
Choice: The Queen

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Pixar has I think run out of gas with Cars. Monster House is charming but has no resonance. The inclusion of A Scanner Darkly might have made this a horse race but honoring the delightful Happy Feet is a) worthwhile and b) a way to reward its maker, George Miller, the director of fine, idiosyncratic films that include Babe, the Mad Max trilogy, and Lorenzo's Oil.

Prediction and choice: Happy Feet

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

This is another competitive field, but I still place Pan's Labyrinth above the rest. As it's also the highest-grossing Spanish-language release in this country I think attention must be paid. An Oscars where Scorsese, Miller, and Guillermo Del Toro walk away with Oscars is not a bad thing.

Prediction and choice: Pan's Labyrinth

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

With no less than three nominees from Dreamgirls, you can predict that either one will win, or they'll cancel each other out. I suspect the former and think that Beyonce's big number, "Listen," will grab the gold.

Prediction and choice: "Listen"

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The best score I heard all last year was Alexandre Desplat's sublime, Satie-inspired work for The Painted Veil. Naturally, it wasn't nominated. But I think voters will hail his compositions from The Queen instead. None of these really stood out, with The Good German and Notes on a Scandal rather obvious scores.

Prediction and choice: The Queen

BEST FILM EDITING

In a perfect world, the cinematography and the editing of Children of Men would be considered in tandem; the cinematography for its long, unbroken, exquisite tracking shots, and the editing for demarcating them just so. But I have a feeling the clumsy, sentimental transitions in the multi-story Babel will win the day and to hell with subtlety.

Prediction: Babel
Choice: Children of Men

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Children of Men had everyone talking, and that should last through tomorrow night. And Emmanuel Lubezki ("Chivo") is a nice guy.

Prediction and choice: Children of Men

BEST ART DIRECTION
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
BEST SOUND MIXING

I'm either going to be very lazy, very arrogant, or very dumb, but I predict a Dreamgirls sweep in all three of these categories, and deservedly so; all three elements help convey the story through changing times and moods. But in costumes I do favor The Devil Wears Prada, for very sharply defining the characters.

Predictions and two choices: Dreamgirls
Costume design choice: The Devil Wears Prada

BEST SOUND EDITING

With the same two nominees up for Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, I figure they'll score with the more acclaimed Letters, which is more subtly edited than the other choices. They're just loud and/or tend toward bombast, like most nominees in the sound categories.

Prediction and choice: Letters from Iwo Jima

BEST MAKEUP

An easy win for the fantasy-laden Pan's Labyrinth. Apocalypto? Click? Click? Get real.

Prediction and choice:

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Another cakewalk, for Davy Jones' octo-face and the Kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Poseidon is another inexplicable nominee.

Prediction and choice: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:

If you really think lefty Hollywood won't give Al Gore a crack at the podium, you've got another think coming. Another easy call, for An Inconvenient Truth, which I didn't see. But I doubt it has half the artistry of the beautifully made and moving Iraq in Fragments.

Prediction: An Inconvenient Truth
Choice: Iraq in Fragments

Lest we think this is too easy, it's the final three categories, which go unremarked upon in most Oscar roundups, that tend to throw everyone off. Best Documentary Shorts tend to favor hot-button topics. My Oscar-watching friends see the Best Animated Shorts and Best Live Action Shorts programs, but as they will attest that doesn't really help. These categories work in mysterious ways and cost valued points. The New York Times is as good a resource as any, and a couple of other publications are breaking the same way, so I'm going to predict The Blood of Yingzhou District for Documentary Short (AIDS in China), The Little Matchgirl for Animated Short, and Binta and the Great Idea (Africa-themed) for Live Action Short. Not having seen any of these, I have no choices, just guesses. But I hear some are on YouTube, an ideal venue for them.

Our tie-breaking question this year is, "How many winners will thank God?" My answer is, four. I pray that I'm right.

Good news for Billy Bob...

Mr. Thornton, call your accountant. You may yet see some residuals from an obscure, more-or-less straight-to-video movie you made a couple of years back, Chrystal. According to the compiler of the "Popular Demand" graphic on the "Most Wanted" page of today's business section, the film, which the Internet Movie Database calls a tale of redemption, redeemed about $83 million at the boxoffice, making it your second biggest hit behind 1998's irredeemable Armageddon.

Bet you thought the IMDb was right, and that the barely released film earned only about $80,000. Quite a difference in zeros, no? You like so sad on the video box, now you can find your smile again.

Or maybe, just maybe, the IMDb is right...?

I'm sure the Times, which usually doesn't slip up this badly, or this baldly, regrets the error.

Il Maestro, or, my life in retrospect(ive)

Thoughts on Ennio Morricone, who receives his honorary Academy Award this coming Sunday...

*I went to see The Untouchables, with his Oscar-nominated score, on Sunday at New York's Film Forum. And it was again a treat. I saw it four times in the summer of 1987, the first in its setting, Chicago, which rolled out the red carpet for it. (There was some squawking that the movie made too big a deal out of the city's gangland past and romanticized the whole era, but if you got it, baby, flaunt it, as Max Bialystock says in The Producers.) David Mamet's script hits the family values button, so hot during the Reagan years, a little too insistently, but it didn't really bother me (about as much as the questionable politics behind 24 get in the way of my weekly cathode jolt). And Brian De Palma's mordant touch (and amazing stylistics) takes the edge off--note how the two good guys felled in the course of the storyline are offed as soon as they sneak a drink, violating Prohibition laws and Kevin Costner's warnings, almost as if in a Mad magazine strip. Back then, who knew that Costner would rise so high and fall so quickly? That the once-magnetic Andy Garcia would get so tiresome? That Patricia Clarkson would emerge from the supportive wife ghetto and have a thriving career? That Reagan, then in the depths of Iran Contra, would be considered a saint today?

I thought of all this--then realized that this was the first film that I saw first run that I had now seen in repertory, as an "old movie," in other words, its glory faded into legend. I'm sure others are on the rep house circuit but I didn't see them. I was 21 when I saw The Untouchables in early June of 1987, 41 today. I feel like Sean Connery's old beat cop, putting in the miles from my aisle seat. The next year Morricone, whose music for the film is sensational, would score Cinema Paradiso, about a film-struck kid's friendship with a projectionist; I'm closer in age now to the projectionist than the kid.

*Q: When is a Morricone film not a Morricone film? A: When his biggest contribution to it has been snipped entirely from the print. Such was my dismal experience with Machine Gun McCain, which was twinned with The Untouchables on the same double feature. I'd really come to see the Italian-made McCain, the only film John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands and Val Avery appeared in together outside of Cassavetes' own work, in 1968. That was disappointment #1--Cassavetes and Rowlands have a single, tough-talking scene together, but all these actors are mostly kept apart, and I'd swear fourth-billed Gabrielle Ferzetti (from the Morricone-scored Once Upon a Time in the West) has more screen time than any of them as a puppetmaster Mafioso in Las Vegas pulling the strings on the turgid and downbeat plot.

But the real big foul-up was several hideous splices in the passable-quality print, removing all of what I were assume were the opening credits and almost of all the end ones; in short, removing Morricone's title song in its entirety. Film Forum had been playing it on a CD between features but this was unacceptable, and they should have aborted the showings entirely. It's a weak film anyway and surely a substitute might have been found, unless, as is entirely possible, Film Forum didn't know what they were getting. [Why not the Vegas-set Bugsy, which has received expanded-edition treatment on DVD?] Film Forum should have looked under the hood before putting this lemon out there.

*Finally, it's good that the great Morricone is getting an Oscar. It was good that Peter O' Toole got one. And fortunate that Robert Altman got his in the nick of time. But I think retirees, those who made their significant contribution and left the soundstage, should also get them, too. That used to be the case but hasn't been in some years. Bravo, Il Maestro, for all that wonderful music, some of which I have on CD...but next year, how about letting Richard Widmark or Doris Day, to name but two living legends who have been mooted for Oscars, take a bow?

Spies like us

Breach illuminates a paradox with welcome simplicity. Faced with a real-life character as compelling, and as unknowable, as notorious FBI traitor Robert Hanssen, many directors would shoot the works--split screens, color schemes, abstract editing, etc. But co-writer and director Billy Ray, whose last film was the measured journalism expose Shattered Glass (2003), brings the story of Hanssen's capture, in early 2001, to the screen with similar understatement. The facts are so incredible that the film, which Universal opens tomorrow, requires no underlining or italicizing.

Breach begins with the placement of Eric O'Neill, an FBI agent-in-waiting, in Hanssen's office. His contact, Kate Burroughs, explains that Hanssen, who has been given a new posting after years as a top Soviet analyst, is suspected of sexual deviancy. But nothing about the upright, rigid Hanssen, a church-every-day Catholic whose taste in music runs toward the Andrews Sisters, squares with his assignment--which is, in fact, a cover for a more shocking takedown, as O'Neill learns. For years, Hanssen had been selling secrets to the Soviets, double-dealing that compromised national security and cost three agents their lives. (The "why" is never clear, but the film suggests an attempt to destroy one's house in order to save it, with Hanssen breaching protocol in an arrogant attempt to point out weaknesses in what we now call "homeland security.") With Hanssen poised to disappear into his rabbit hole of overseas contacts, O'Neill has to win his wary superior's trust, the better to catch him in the act of espionage.

Hanssen's story was previously filmed as the Norman Mailer-written TV film Master Spy (2002), starring William Hurt. I haven't seen it, but reviews were iffy and I doubt Hurt, despite his own gift for opacity, was quite as guarded, or as interesting, as Chris Cooper is in this film. (I really can't picture Mary Louise-Parker as his standard-bearing wife in the TV movie. Kathleen Quinlan is more believably, if more conventionally, cast in the film.) Gruff and saturnine, and quick to judge, Cooper's Hanssen's is prickly and difficult, but his seeming rectitude and insistence on proper manners makes him FBI-trustworthy. [Accent on the "seeming"--the deviancy charges were true, as Hanssen made secret sex tapes of him and his wife and clearly had other extracurricular interests besides a fetish for Catherine Zeta-Jones in, believe it or not, the film Entrapment.] Ray made good use of the callow Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass, and the ur-Christensen, Ryan Phillippe, gives a competent, straight-ahead performance as O'Neill, whose marriage feels the burden of his top-secret assignment in familiar but unobtrusive scenes. I reckon that Laura Linney, as Burroughs, is, along with Gary Cole and 24 alum Dennis Haysbert, playing some sort of composite character, but as always she wears her assignment well and pulls some dimension from Burroughs, who squandered her career under Hanssen and is determined to extract a little payback.

Fluidly shot by Tak Fujimoto at D.C. locales that recalls the tautness he brought to the FBI-based The Silence of the Lambs, Breach has several quietly tense setpieces, particularly a lengthy sequence where O'Neill tries to keep Hanssen occupied while the latter's car is being stripped down and searched, which echoes a scene in the fact-based French Connection. The Good Shepherd made the mistake of tackling an elusive and evasive agent head-on, and at undue length; at least in this instance, viewing the subject from a distance, as quarry in a cat-and-mouse game that both sides play, works much better (and the film clips along quickly at a lean 110 minutes).

The flip side of a worm turning, this time in a more positive direction, is explored in the German film The Lives of Others (Sony Pictures Classics), which is just sentimental enough to win this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar. I don't mean that as a dig; the first-time writer and director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, scores on both counts, and his script has a classical, almost Hitchcockian structure, as an East German Stasi captain, assigned to snoop on a playwright and his actress girlfriend, finds his allegiance changing from the state to its people.

The drab, institutional details of day-to-day life in the green and gray GDR are keenly observed, to the very point of a perverse nostalgia for the bad old days (how we miss our Soviet-styled villains) and Ulrich Muhe, an East German actor and activist who played his part in bringing down the Berlin Wall, is the real deal as the charmless functionary. Muhe I believed...but I didn't really buy his character, whose spots would not change that easily in a communist bloc country. It didn't keep me from admiring much of the film, it's just that, having seen a compelling, witness testimony-derived Stasi documentary, The Decomposition of the Soul, it's apparent that the GDR did not believe in tears. Or does the weight of history make it easier for me to swallow an agent turning toward darkness rather than the light?

The battle for Algiers

There are two things wrong with Indigenes, and neither have anything to do with the film itself, a deserved Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film that opens in New York on Friday. (Politicking often has more to do with securing a nomination in this category than in any other; last year's dreary French entry, Joyeux Noel, clearly had someone carrying its Perrier for it). The first error is its generic and completely ill-suited U.S. title, Days of Glory, which someone at IFC Films or The Weinstein Company, its co-distributors, obviously thought might be catchier than the more pointed Indigenes, a derogatory term the French used to describe the 130,000 Algerian soldiers who fought and died for their ungrateful "homeland" in World War II. There is no glory whatsoever in what these so-called "natives" did, and the film, co-written, co-produced, and directed by Rachid Bouchareb, doesn't pander to Greatest Generation cliches in showing their corpse-strewn sacrifice. Days of Glory, or Glory Days, has been used as a title at least 20 times previously, including another instance just last year, and it hasn't gotten any fresher with age. Why not just Indigenes, and flatter the audience that goes to (gak!) subtitled films for their intelligence? That way the two distribution entities needn't have bothered with the vaguely insulting poster image, which trumps up the film's unsentimental romantic angle. A date movie this is not.

Indigenes is about four North African men who in 1943 proudly enlist in the fight against the Nazis (one, Yassir, is played by Samy Naceri, the star of France's phenomenally popular Taxi movies. You didn't see Jimmy Fallon assuming his role in our yellow cab version). Wet behind the ears, the men are trained, then duly dispatched to Italy, Provence, and the Vosges for dangerous, scut-work combat duty, clearing the way for the bigger and more prestigious campaigns to sweep through. Gradually they realize their lot as second-class citizens, subject to niggling racial persecution--no fresh rations, no boots for winter warfare, no leave, little promotional prospects for Muslims, and censorship of private mail, specifically correspondence between a native French woman and one of the recruits. The combat scenes, shot by cinematographer Patrick Blossier, are graphically old-school; Saving Private Ryan added whiz-bang CGI effects to the battlefield reportoire but Indigenes hearkens back to the low-tech, close-in portrayals favored by Samuel Fuller and Robert Aldrich. The film concludes with a grueling battle, led by the men, in Alsace-Lorraine, where they are received open-heartedly as liberators by the citizens. Liberty and fraternity, however, were not to last. Dismayed by colonial uprising and eventual liberation, events triggered by just this sort of patronization, the French government froze the veterans' pensions, a state of affairs that lasted 47 years until the release of this film.

And therein lies my second complaint. Shamed into action by his wife, who was profoundly moved by Indigenes, president Jacques Chirac decided to reinstate the pensions, a move that will affect 80,000 veterans or widows from more than 20 countries and cost the government $140 million. Now that is a real Hollywood ending, and a triumph for the form in changing men's minds...but you wouldn't know it from the film, which needed a final title card explaining the government's action. Surely one could have been added. The U.S. distributors have done what they could to make the forcefully indignant Indigenes a feel-good movie, but, given an earned opportunity to celebrate its accomplishment, they blew it.

Heights and depths

Down in the dumps with In the Heights, but onwards and upwards with Gutenberg! The Musical! (pictured), as I take in two Off Broadway musicals for Live Design.

Photo: James Ambler

New York Theater News now online

The New York Theater News newsletter, which I've been writing for since 2004, has hit the web. Online its content is paired with that of the 20-year-old London Theatre Newsletter, both of which are published and edited from New York by Roger Harris. Three short reviews by yours truly currently headline the site, and there's plenty of archival content submitted by some of the sharpest pens on both sides of the Atlantic. Theater News Online can be found here.

Lure of the Piper

One of my movie wishes was fulfilled Monday night. Thanks to Paramount Pictures, which has provided a brand-new archival print, New York'a Anthology Film Archives has been showcasing Jacques Demy's The Pied Piper for what is a de-facto 35th anniversary engagement, which ends this Thursday. My Cineaste colleague and "Anthologist," Jared Rapfogel, tells me that, based on a request from the George Eastman House, Paramount (which almost certainly did not treat the film this cordially in 1972) was happy to provide the print, "so long as more than five people showed up to see it." On a frigid Monday evening, considerably more than five film cultists showed up at the 7pm screening, with many more queuing up in the cold to see the 9pm show; the house was just about full. The opportunity to see one of the great French director's most obscure features (his second, and last, in English) was just too good to pass up, temperatures be damned--though it must be added that the opportunity to see it with its star, the pop troubadour Donovan, in attendance for a Q&A was completely irresistible. Anthology's hook was well-baited for a dead-zone night in February, so out I went.

How far has The Pied Piper fallen off the cinematic radar screen? The plunge is so abyssal I couldn't find a single image on the whole WWW to filch for an illustration; even the star's website has only a single, meager black-and-white photo to show for an experience that he remembers well. [Problem solved, thanks to a reader; see below.] But the image I did swipe (I mean, pick) is at least apt, as the film, co-written by Demy, Andrew Birkin (currently Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which with its mysterious interloper upsetting the bourgeois applecart bears some relationship)and Mark Peploe, of several Bertolucci pictures, quotes from Robert Browning's 1888 poem, as well as the Brothers Grimm story, and applies a critique of 20th century morality to the plotline.

The Pied Piper is one of those pictures that boggles our 21st century minds with its early Seventies G-rating: the atmosphere in the town of Hamelin is seamy, thick with the stench of adult hypocrisy, child exploitation and abuse is rampant, and the most sympathetic character, Michael Hordern's Jewish alchemist (who is unjustly blamed for the rat plague), is burned at the stake at the end--not as horrifyingly as Oliver Reed at the end of Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), maybe, but nothing you'd find as the capper of a Pixar cartoon, either. The entire mood of the piece, indeed, is closer to one of Hammer's pastoral horrors of the time(like Vampire Circus) than any children's film of its (or this) period I can recall, and is much more unsettling than its companion piece, Demy's bizarre and bawdy fable Donkey Skin, which was recently re-released. Today, just the unsavory presence of Donald Pleasence and John Hurt, as the town's most ignoble noble citizens, would land the film a PG-13. But it's Donovan's cheery, reassuring presence that is the film's scariest element; with the rest of the cast, you know where you stand, but there's no telling what goes on behind those mello yellow eyes. (He's no actor, but largely isolated from the rest of the adult cast and given less screen time than you might anticipate, he isn't used for his thespian abilities. His larger contribution, the 15 or so minutes of medieval-flavored score used in the film, is fine.)

And what a supporting cast Demy, the director of one of my very favorite films, the bittersweet and peerless The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) imported to Germany. The late Jack Wild, a Supporting Actor Oscar nominee as the Artful Dodger in Oliver! (1969), had one of his biggest subsequent roles here, aiding Hordern's alchemist. In her first film, 11-year-old Cathryn Harrison (granddaughter of Rex) plays Hurt's intended; believe it or not, it was not her strangest assignment, an honor that goes to Louis Malle's unclassifiable apocalyptic fantasy Black Moon (1975), which will throw you for a loop the next time it airs on the Showtime channels, as it has been lately (every director, it seems, has to make an end-of-the-world type picture; The Pied Piper, which closes with the eruption of the plague and the literal fade-out of Hamelin's children, is Demy's). Burly Peter Vaughan (Straw Dogs and Time Bandits) plays the sanctimoniously red-robed bishop, the one who suggests that Hamelin's rats are a "Jewish problem," and writer-director David Leland (Mona Lisa) has a small part. Roy Kinnear, an indispensable presence in many Richard Lester pictures, is faultless as the fawning, obsequious burgomaster. I especially enjoyed seeing, as his status-conscious wife, none other than Diana "Swingin'" Dors, Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe--that heyday didn't last, but she's funny here, not least when wearing a ram's horn headdress.

The costuming and sets, suggesting a medieval fair, are excellent. But The Pied Piper, as much as I liked seeing it, isn't quite a lost masterpiece. Demy had his DP, Peter Suschitzky (of numerous David Cronenberg films), shoot much of the film at a discreet middle distance, I suppose to capture the actors and settings in different tableaux, like ancient woodcuts; there are few closeups, and little cutting within scenes, and for as stylized as the film is a certain lassitude sets in by the midpoint. And I'm afraid the rats disappoint, as they so often do in movies. On the street, or scurrying about the New York subway tracks, they're properly verminous. But the plump, shiny-coated trained rats used in most films, like his one, are, well, kind of cute. In the film's most memorable image, which I'm sure Werner Herzog had in mind for his Nosferatu remake, they burst forth from a cathedral-shaped wedding cake. That worked, but they otherwise lack menace, a shortcoming of Willard and its sequel, Ben, which were highly popular at that time. There's much to appreciate about this Pied Piper but not much that really appeals. [I should add that the image was lovely but Anthology's sound system couldn't quite handle the audio.]

What, then, of the guest of honor? I've liked Donovan since his song "Atlantis" was used to accompany a ghastly murder in Goodfellas; I don't know if he appreciated that, but as he has no qualms about his biggest hits being recycled in commercials, and being an everthing-is-connected kind of person, I doubt he minded. He resembles a frizzier-haired version of the actor Peter MacNicol, and speaks in a hushed, theatrical cadence, appropriate for a mystic (he and David Lynch are currently odd-coupled trying to get TM taught in schools). He said he had little contact with Demy on set, as he played his part in the overall vision, but that Demy's wife, filmmaker Agnes Varda, was constantly second-guessing him, trying to get Demy to make more of a children's story and less of a modern-day metaphor out of the material. I saw who won that battle.

I asked him about working with the rats. "I had a kind of kinship with them," he said. "One made himself very comfortable on my shoulder. I looked at him and said, 'Who's your agent?'"

[Much obliged to wogggly@ix.netcom.com for the illustration...]

Postcard from HK

"Hong Kong: Live It! Love It!" is the latest slogan my former home is using to drum up the tourist trade. It goes without saying that I love it, and I'm glad to see it intact and in one piece a full decade after its handover to China. "1997" was on everyone's lips when I lived there, but, despite the severe economic downturn the old Crown Colony weathered, and residual nervousness over the Chinese government's intentions in the "one country, two systems" framework, 97 was as much a non-cataclysm as, say, Y2K.

And there is much to love in Hong Kong. Its subway system, a visitor's main tourist artery, is the pride of the world, a model of gleaming efficiency that even the most passionate New York booster will recall with tears of envy when boarding the cruddy old D train upon his or her return. Its ever-increasing verticality makes a happy home for its population of black kites, sleek and beautiful birds of prey who kept me enraptured just be wheeling around the sky level to our 32nd floor perch at a 40-story hotel in Tin Hau. [The hotel's name? L'Hotel. Hong Kongers are mad about anything French. The arrival of Sofia Coppola's vapid Marie Antoinette was a cultural event of some import, and its showcasing at fancy mall cinemas surrounded by shops a-glitter with French designer labels a fitting launchpad.] The Hong Kong Film Archive, opened in 2001, performs a valuable service in preserving that part of its past. The local cuisine is exquisite, particularly if you don't mind feasting on roast pigeon (delicious) and walking through grungy, entrails-strewn cooked food markets to find it. And the Pizza Hut is the best on Earth. Why that is I do not know.

But live it? I'm not so sure. The black kites see immune to the air pollution that smoggily beset most of our time there; never a model environment, HK has worsened since China's rapid industrialization took hold. And its most popular districts, like Causeway Bay and Central, are fast reaching Soylent Green levels of uninhabitability, or at least unwalkability; the streets are simply choked with people, some waiting to board ground transport that adds to the soupy air quality. And bloggers of my acquaintance who lament the passage of time and its toll on landmarks in New York would have a fit in Hong Kong; the picture above that I took of the historic Star Ferry Terminal is rather conspicuously missing the historic Star Ferry Terminal, which was torn down to make way for a new one not long before our arrival. The government promises to take "cultural sensitivity" into greater consideration before the next renovation project, but a little piece of my memories is now rubble.


I did notice that as Hong Kong extends deeper onto reclaimed land from its "fragrant harbor" (which in time will be a fragrant river) it's loathe to tear down too many buildings; the older ones are simply absorbed into the newer ones that front them, like some sort of hybrid organism connected by store-lined passageways. And it is never at a loss for creative ways to use its verticality. When I last visited in 2000, the Mid-Levels Escalator, or "Travelator" (pictured) hadn't quite sprouted the resaturant-laden economy that underlies its snaking to the upper reaches of some difficult-to-walk streets; now a stomach-popping variety of food options is available along its path, from Krispy Kreme to Russian. But here, too, a price is paid. The picture-perfect view of Central, once dominated by the transcendent HSBC Building, is now overly cluttered with too many mediocre skyscrapers, which at night try to outdo one another with fancy, zig-zaggy light patterns along their tops and sides. The skyline has lost its specialness. And I'm leery of some of those chockablock apartment complexes soaring ever upwards. I guess it works for Hong Kong but is that what Atlantic Yards, across the street, will look like?


There is, however, green space in Hong Kong, on the outlying islands like Lamma (pictured is a view not far from our friend Christine's flat). Improved ferry service and the addition of more homes, restaurants, and amenities over time haven't undone its quieter charms. I've lived, and loved, and again left Hong Kong, skeptical of a future that summons Blade Runner more and more insistently but relieved that its some of its smaller wonders are intact.

Where the wild things are

I need to do a deeper, more philosophical post about our recent trip to Hong Kong. But, in the meantime, is this not the coolest place for a seven-year-old to live? Meet Aidan Holmbraker, aspiring paleontologist and rock-and-roll drummer; the mural on his wall surely gives him a leg-up on the former career. The son of our dear friends Bernie and Amy Holmbraker, Aidan said his one condition regarding the mural was "no meat-eating dinosaurs," lest they disturb his sleep. [But he still had plenty of awesome pictures of raptors digging into intestines to share with me.]

When Bernie told me Aidan had a dinosaur mural on his wall, I thought, hey, cute. But I was unprepared for how breathtakingly professional it was; not surprising, given that the muralist, Bernie's Chicago-based sister Susan, has been at this for a number of years. It took her five days to execute this project. I was so taken with it I immediately wanted murals and frescoes of dinosaurs, Godzilla, and maybe Frankenstein and the Wolf Man on our walls here in Brooklyn, but while marveling at the quality of Aidan's artwork, Lora was rather unenthused about my plans. A man can dream. Click to see more of Holmbraker Murals.

I thought I knew a few things about dinosaurs, my life-long obsession, but I'm amazed at how much more Aidan knew, and how adult his books were. Dinosaurs, rock-and-roll, and an Asian address that's reasonably close to Mongolia and fossil finds: the pride of his parents is shaping up to be the 21st century Indiana Jones.