'American Idol' 02/27 Top 10 Women Perform

Welcome back to American Idol, where saying you want to decapitate a 16-year-old boy and leave his bloody skull dangling from your rearview mirror is a compliment and a sign of thoughtfully conceived judging. Which of the Top 10 Idol Women will prove deserving of becoming disembodied automotive ornamentation on Wednesday night?

Singer: CARLY SMITHSON
Song: "Crazy on You"
My Take: Already the women are making smarter song choices than the men did in Tuesday's lackluster show. Dipping into the Heart catalogue was a good move for Carly, though she gets a little shrill on some of the higher parts. After failing as a torch singer last week, Carly's closer to her comfort zone as a rocker. You know what Carly does more than anything, though? She reminds me how spectacular the Sisters Wilson are. This isn't the sort of cover that makes you forget that somebody'll always have done it better.
Jack, Chrissy and Simon Say: It started off rough for Randy, a little pitchy, but she found herself by the middle for an aight performance. Paula can tell Carly loves Heart. Paula loves heart too. In jars. On her desk. Simon, unsure why Carly's panting, doesn't think she's connected with the right song, that none of the girls can touch her vocally. He's just waiting for her to have her moment. Carly was bad last week and she's fine this week, but I'd feel better about her if the judges weren't required to over-plug her at every opportunity.

Singer: SYESHA MERCADO
Song: "Me and Mr[s] Jones"
My Take: This is a fabulous song that's designed for a male with a deep, soulful voice and it's been rearranged blandly for Syesha, pushing the verse to a high place where her voice is at its least interesting. When it gets to the chorus, she finds herself, but there isn't enough of that. She comes across as sweet, not sassy.
Jack, Chrissy and Simon Say: Randy didn't like the song choice, advising her to give it what she's got. Paula would like to cut Syesha into bits, wrap her in colorful paper and give her to children at Halloween as the ultimate treat, but only on the louder notes. Simon found it a bit indulgent and says that the gender-bending choice was a silly thing for her to have attempted.

Singer: BROOKE WHITE
Song: "You're So Vain"
My Take: Yes, I compared Brooke to Carly Simon in my recap last week. It wasn't exactly a stretch as comparisons go and now it seems downright obvious. Brooke's cover is straight-forward, familiar and well-interpreted, though it opens up the door for a discussion of how we feel about people doing carbon copy remakes of songs first performed by singer-songwriters. But that's another issue. Her voice sounds strong and well-matched. As for the guitar, Brooke starts playing, but it ends up on her lap for the middle. She picks it up again at the end, but at no point is it musically necessary for the performance, since the melody is being driven by the guitarist in the band. It's just something superfluous she's doing that makes her appear to have a reason to be sitting on a stool.
Jack, Chrissy and Simon Say: Randy thought it was a great song choice, but he asks if the song was intended for Simon. Paula would like to put Brooke's head on a pike and put that pike in the middle of town square, so that her song choices can inspire everybody forever. Simon absolutely loved it. He is, indeed, so vain and he suspects that the song is about him, doesn't he? Doesn't he?

Singer: RAMIELE MALUBAY
Song: "Don't Leave Me This Way"
My Take: After emphasizing one of her favorite aspects of Filipino culture -- Polynesian dancing -- Ramiele digs into another Filipino stand-by this week: Karaoke. When you hear the judges criticize karaoke performances, this is what they mean. She's just up there mouthing the words, staying in tune, bopping around looking like she's trying to make her good time appear infectious. There's nothing of her personality or tone to the performance, which there was last week.
Jack, Chrissy and Simon Say: It was only OK for Randy, who wonders why she didn't pick a doper record. Paula would like to cook Ramiele in a red wine reduction with seasonal vegetables and serve her at a dinner party, so that all of her friends can appreciate her fine flavors, but this week she doesn't feel like Ramiele got to perform her magic. Simon compares it to a ghastly wedding performance. He says Ramiele's still one of the top two or three female vocalists.

Singer: KRISTY LEE COOK
Song: "You're No Good"
My Take: After looking wan and tired last week and sounding that way too, Kristy looks great this week. But why do I feel nothing coming from her performance? The song is supposed to be scolding and scalding and Kristy just smiles and shakes. I may be wrong, but I recall a stern power to the Linda Ronstadt arrangement of the song that Kristy seems to be doing. Did I mention Kristy looks super? Because she does, in her tight, shimmery silver top.
Jack, Chrissy and Simon Say: Randy says it was a 100 percent improvement, but he's still waiting for her breakout moment. Paula, also relieved at Kristy's return to form, would like to stretch her out on a medieval rack, so that in addition to singing, she can also compete in the WNBA. Simon doesn't know how to label Kristy, but that she has real potential. He advises her to go more clearly in a country direction.

For the rest of the recap, head over to Zap2it's It Happened Last Night blog

And folks are always encouraged to check out Zap2it's Guide to American Idol.

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'American Idol' 02/26 Top 10 Men Perform

After a week battling through the flu, I think I'm working at 65 to 70 percent as Tuesday (Feb. 26) night's American Idol performance episode begins. As I learned from Paula Abdul, though, you can't use poor health as an excuse. You have to go out there and be yourself (or somebody very like you), expose your true colors to the world and paint every doorknob with the flavor of your dreams. The results for the Top 10 Idol men will follow...

Singer: MICHAEL JOHNS
Song: "Go You Your Own Way"
My Take: I'm not saying that men shouldn't sing Fleetwood Mac, but this is a poor choice for Michael. After his "I love sport!" pre-song clip, everything feels too casual, too taken-for-granted tonight. Some of it has something do with his relentless rocking/bouncing around the stage, which is making me seasick. More problematic is the fact that Michael is sharp throughout each chorus. He sort of strolls through each verse, but in the process of trying to sell the familiar part to the audience, he pushes much too hard. There was no '70s rock anthem to which he could have done more assertive justice?
Yacko, Dot and Simon Say: Randy kind of liked it, but wanted Michael to let go. Paula thinks he's doubly consistent, that he's "already there." Simon thinks it was his weakest performance, coasting along. Simon didn't like the song choice, but Paula insists it was directed at the women. Then never mind my criticism, readers. Ladies love sharp notes.

Singer: JASON CASTRO
Song: "I Just Want To Be Your Everything"
My Take: Poor Jason, shocked by the discovery that being on American Idol isn't just about making music. He's compensating by making double-music, whipping out the guitar again this week. He's letting the backing vocalists do the hardest, highest notes on this Andy Gibb cover, which feels like cheating to me. It's an easy song if you only do the easy part. Really, he exhibited a range of maybe four or five notes. Last week the guitar was a helpful prop. This week it was a crutch.
Yacko, Dot and Simon Say: Randy's concerned that this is a vocal competition and that the guitar was carrying him, calling it "cute" and "charming." Paula thinks it was a clever choice, but she wants to see him put aside the guitar next week. Simon thought the song was too schmaltzy and that he didn't do himself any favors.

Singer: LUKE MENARD
Song: "Killer Queen"
My Take: Luke is better with this song than last week's bland track, because Queen lets him show off some more theatrical vocals. I'm not sure his falsetto is really good enough to carry an entire song and Luke's vocal range doesn't let him have much back and forth even when the notes get lower. Performance-wise, Luke doesn't have a clue what to do without six or seven guys behind him on stage, so most of his effort is put into smiling and trying to remember the lyrics, rather than having any fun with the song's wordplay.
Yacko, Dot and Simon Say: Randy raves about the degree of difficulty, saying he's closer to his vibe. Paula says it was the perfect song and that this is why she fought to get Luke in the Top 24. "You are always going to be judged with the original and the trouble is that the singer of that song had charisma and personality and you didn't," Simon says. Luke's just happy somebody liked him.

Singer: ROBBIE CARRICO
Song: "Hot-Blooded"
My Take: Robbie's going to have to protest his rock credentials as long as he's on the show, Constantine-style. At least he doesn't have a Bo Bice embarrassing him each week. He does a decent pop vocal on a Foreigner song that probably requires more vocal rawness than he possesses. There's no rasp or edge to his voice at all and this song seems to require something like that to be properly sold. Here's my argument: Robbie can say he's rock-n-roll if he wants to and that's his prerogative. Rock-n-roll can be in his hair and in his scruff and in his jeans and in his drag-racing car. Rock-n-roll can be in his flippin' soul. But it isn't in his voice and he'd go further in this competition if he played to his actual strengths rather than what he views as the embodiment of his essence.
Yacko, Dot and Simon Say: Randy says that there are different types of rock, but he isn't sure if any of them were on display, that Robbie didn't have enough "UNGNGN!" Paula says nobody knows who you are but you. Then she says he played it safe and that he lost his character, which is her way of saying she didn't buy the song on him. Randy adds that Rock is an attitude and Robbie agrees. Simon thought the vocal was OK.

For the full recap, head over to Zap2it's It Happened Last Night blog.

And, as always, check out Zap2it's Guide to American Idol.

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Last Minute 2008 Oscar Predictions

Hey gang. Last year, I did my Oscar picks over five or six days, looking at every single category and making fearless predictions. I don't remember how well I did, which much have meant that I didn't do very well. I remember when I succeed.

This year, I'm keeping it short and sweet. Only the Big Eight categories.

That doesn't mean I won't have emotional investments elsewhere. I would love to see the confusion to follow a Roderick Jaynes editing win. I would celebrate the humiliation of the Academy giving an award to "Norbit." I want Dario Marianelli to win for his "Atonement" score and Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova to win for "Falling Slowly."

Etc...

Follow through after the bump for what predictions I chose to make...

Click through...

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

Dark Horse: There's a lot of support in many categories for "Ratatouille" and if the Academy feels like throwing a coronation party for Brad Bird, he could sneak in with a win.

Should Win/ Will Win: Sorry, but I still like Diablo Cody and I still like her script for "Juno." I'm not gonna play idiotic "backlash" games and I'm not going to make a stupid joke about her stripping past. For the love Pete, guys, don't misrepresent the story: She stripped so she could write about stripping and because she thought it would be a funny thing to do. Maybe if more Hollywood screenwriters took time to have real occupations (or even funny joke occupations) they'd writing more interesting scripts. Just a suggestion.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Dark Horse: If Ronald Harwood doesn't win for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," this overrated experimental film won't win anything. I wouldn't find that at all sad, but maybe the Oscar voters would.

Should Win: I would love to see what Sarah Polley would say if she won for "Away From Her." That would be spectacular and a nice validation of her gifts.

Will Win: The Coens did a marvelous and literal adaptation of "No Country For Old Men." Good for them.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Dark Horse: All over the Net, folks who do this stuff for a living are going out on a limb and predicting Tilda Swinton will win for "Michael Clayton," which is a cute sort of hypocrisy. For months the Oscar pundits blather about predictive evidence, about bellwether awards and guilds and critics groups. But now many of those folks are predicting Swinton and all for the exact same reason: "Michael Clayton" isn't going to win anything else and Oscar likes spreading the wealth. And if every Oscar voters does, indeed, decide to think exactly like an online Oscar pundit, I agree with this choice. Swinton's very good and it would be career recognition.

Should Win: Bad accents are tough to overcome and Amy Ryan's accent in "Gone Baby Gone" is often a problem. But I rewatched the movie a couple weeks ago and was blown away by her performance. The first time I watched, I was appreciative, but I confess I didn't think it was award-worthy. I do now.

Will Win: Rudy Dee, who allegedly appears in "Gone Baby Gone," but is most certainly worth of recognition for one of the most important careers in the entertainment industry. Honor Dee and you honor six decades of struggle and questing for equality. You honor Ossie Davis too. And, heck, you honor a somewhat well-respected movie that made more money at the box office than any best picture nominee other than "Juno." If you honor Cate Blanchett, it's just a way of saying, "Hey, way to play another famous person, Cate."

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Dark Horse: If the Golden Globes would have gone with Casey Affleck, it wouldn't have been a massive upset. Welcoming young stars into the club is what the Globes do. Welcoming old stars into the club is what the Oscars do. That why the dark horse here is Hal Holbrook.

Should Win/Will Win: I can't see Javier Bardem losing for "No Country for Old Men," nor can I see any reason not to be completely content with that possibility. As embodiments of shaded malevolence go, Bardem's performance may be the best of its type since Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs." Hopkins won best actor. Bardem probably had more screentime, but he'd got supporting in the bag.

BEST ACTRESS:

Dark Horse: I know it's the predictable answer, but Ellen Page is the dark-horse here. I'd feel more confident in her chances if she'd pulled off a single head-to-head upset against somebody in this category during the award season. But she didn't. Even her Indie Spirit win on Saturday came against a weird field that included Sienna Miller and Parker Posey.

Should Win: It's time for Laura Linney to have an Oscar and in an ideal world, she'll get it soon, when she deserves it, rather than a few years down the road when she resorts to playing a woman with a wasting disease. Her performance in "The Savages" is never award-baiting (Away with you, Marion Cotillard), it's just good.

Will Win: I have no problems with Julie Christie winning. She was good in her movie and she'll thank Sarah Polley and Gordon Pinsent. That would be just ducky.

BEST ACTOR:

Dark Horse: It's important to keep patting George Clooney on the head whenever he does good things. Otherwise, he'll do another "Batman" movie. And his performance was far from my problem with "Michael Clayton."

Should Win: I've said this enough times already: The best male acting performance of the year was Viggo Mortensen's in "Eastern Promises." Frankly, I'm just glad it was nominated at all.

Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis acts the roof off in "There Will Be Blood." In think he *even* plays a character in a movie. But mostly, he ACTS. He hasn't had an Oscar for 20 years. Might as well give him another. No harm.

BEST DIRECTOR:

Dark Horse: How about if the Oscar voters decide that after giving best screenplay, best picture and best editing to the Brothers Coen, they just decide they're tired of 'em? And they decide to reward Paul Thomas Anderson for orchestrating the tremendous weirdness of "There Will Be Blood"? That would be wacky.

Should Win/Will Win: Even if something weird happens and a different film wins Best Picture somehow, I can't see the Coens not earning a well-deserved first best actor trophy for their first officially credited directing collaboration.

BEST PICTURE:

Dark Horse: There's only "Juno" and even that requires pointless rationalization. Every meaningful Hollywood guild has given its top prize to "No Country." But if Academy voters are like regular filmgoers (historically, they only occasionally have been), then maybe they go with their hearts. Maybe they say "Look, we resisted the temptation to go with 'Little Miss Sunshine last year, but this year we're trusting our hearts." It would be a huge upset, obviously, not in the least because "Juno" would then take best picture probably as one of only two wins.

Should Win/ Will Win: I finally finished my Best Films of 2007 list yesterday and "No Country" was my top choice. I'd be really pleased to see the best picture Oscar go to the movie I thought was the best of the year. That probably hasn't happened since... dunno... "Schindler's List"?

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Belated Top 10 Films of 2007: Part II

[Inevitable apologies for the show unveiling (and... er... writing) of the second part of this list. People have commented, IMed and asked doubting that the second half of the list was ever going to exist at all.

Mea Culpa.

Flua Culpa in the case of this week. After five days of being barely able to leave my couch, I'm finally back to maybe 50%. I've contemplated taking HGH or steroids to get me back to blogging faster, but I want to make it clear that I wouldn't have been trying to give myself any competitive edge. I'd just have been trying to help the team.

I still have increasingly dim hopes of doing a truncated Oscars prediction post also, but don't hold your breath.]

In case you've forgotten...

10)"Waitress"
9)"The Bourne Ultimatum"
8)"There Will Be Blood"
7)"The Lookout"
6)"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"

Follow through after the bump for my Top 10. It's predictable. It's almost certainly gonna be shorter than usual. I'm sick and lazy.

Click through...

5) "Once" (dir. John Carney) - There's a weird thing about "Once" that I have trouble explaining. It goes like this: Usually when I adore what's obviously a no-budget first film, I say "Boy, I can't wait to see what that director's going to do next," but despite loving "Once," I'm not bursting at the seams to see John Carney's next film. This is based on the completely unfair perception that I had walking out of the movie that "Once" was the product less of Carney's writing and directing and more of pure alchemy, that Carney's great stroke of genius was putting Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in front of the camera together. And resisting a traditional happy ending. I also don't know if I ever need to see Hansard and Irglova acting again, as honest and unaffected as their performances are. It's not a launching pad to other movies. "Once" is an 85-minute romantic, musical gem of a movie. I wouldn't add anything, polish anything or change anything to it. Is that weird?

4) "Atonement" (dir. Joe Wright) -- I guess my feelings for "Once" are no weirder than some folks already find my intense warmth for a certain breed of very classical, fairly British, epic filmmaking. I take no shame in my appreciation for Anthony Minghella's BIGGER works (I prefer "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold Mountain" to "The English Patient," though). I take no shame in owning and appreciating "Casablanca" and "Gone With the Wind." Viewing the word through a constant prism of irony doesn't preclude the ability to occasionally appreciate a masterful piece of earnest cinema. That's what "Atonement" is. If you put together a checklist of every technical aspect that goes into great filmmaking, it gets a mark in every category. The performances (with Saoirse Ronan as a well-deserved standout) are wonderful, as are the costumes, production design, cinematography, score and editing. Director Joe Wright shows that the camera control that elevated "Pride & Prejudice" wasn't just beginner's luck. The story problems that the movie suffers from are, I think, mostly a product of a difficult-to-adapt source material. Could I have felt a smidge more emotional pull at the end? I guess so. But I felt enough. This sort of filmmaking is done so very rarely and it's done badly so frequently that you want to honor the "Atonements" so that you aren't stuck with dozens more "Memoirs of a Geishas."

3) Judd Apatow FunPack: "Knocked Up" (Apatow)/ "Superbad" (Greg Mottola) -- Sorry for the cheat here. It happens. "Superbad" and "Knocked Up" were both the summer's best blockbusters and the year's best comedies and if any two films more permanently imprinted on the pop culture landscape this year, I don't know what they were. The remarkable thing is that despite outgrossing "Superbad," "Knocked Up" has probably taken a backseat in the collective consciousness, with the thousands upon thousands of teens now using "McLovin'" as their IM and message board handles. My feelings about the two films remain unchanged. Perhaps because Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl are just better actors, I buy the sweetness at the core of "Knocked Up" more than the last act attempt to grow a heart on the part of "Superbad." And yet "Superbad" almost certainly delivers more laughs, as it doesn't relent to soft-headedness until the last 10 minutes, while Apatow's self-directed effort starts pulling punches around half-way.

2) "Zodiac" (dir. David Fincher) -- When I first sketched out a hypothetical list at the end of last year (yes, I've been procrastinating for a long time), "Zodiac" came in at No. 10. Then I watched Fincher's director's cut on DVD. None of the additions were big, but a second viewing moved the film up to No. 5. Then I watched wealth of bonus features, which clarified and explained Fincher's vision and his maniacal attention to detail and it was all I could do to keep "Zodiac" out of the top spot. It joins "All the President's Men" as one of the greatest thrillers ever made about a professional process, treating the job of being a police officer or a journalist with so much respect that it can't give in to the normal beats that we would expect from a serial killer movie. Robert Downey Jr. was screwed out of a supporting actor nomination, though the entire cast is excellent. And Harris Savides' cinematography is some of the finest use of digital photography yet to make it to the big screen (right up there with the lensing of "Collateral," if you ask me). This is a film with a stature that's only going to grow and grow and in a decade people will be blown away that the members of the Academy saw fit to give "Zodiac" ZERO Oscar nominations.

1) "No Country For Old Men" (dir. The Brothers Coen) -- My favorite Coen Brothers movie remains "Miller's Crossing," but someday soon it'll be great to set aside an evening and watch "Blood Simple," "Fargo" and "No Country For Old Men" all in a row to soak up how the Coen Brothers have so totally reshaped the contemporary crime thriller. Not enough has really been made of how literal an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel this actually is. But as cinematic as McCarthy's novel was, the easiest thing for a filmmaker to do is to screw up a good book. The hardest thing is to fully realize that original potential. I wrote a lot about the movie and the book and the allegedly unresolved ending and all that other stuff that has some viewers all atwitter back when I first saw it. No movie got a higher rating from me last year, so nothing else had any chance of being No. 1 on my list. This one was easy.

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'American Idol' 02/20 Top 12 Women Perform

There has been much talk of a flu bug decimating the American Idol women this week. Is our shared infirmity going to make me more generous to Wednesday's (Feb. 20) performances from the Top 12 American Idol Women? Or am I going to blame them for infecting me at last week's Idol party? We'll see... As Ryan Seacrest says, the show must go on.

Singer: KRISTY LEE COOK
Song: "Rescue Me"
My Take: Enough already with Kristy Lee's barrel horse. In her Idol season, Carrie Underwood would often seemingly take weeks off, letting her role be played by Robo Carrie. I don't know if Kristy Lee has a Real Carrie in her, but she certainly has Robo Carrie down. She's a solid and experienced performer. Her wrinkled nose says "I'm naughty," while her raised eyebrows say "But I'm innocent, too." And her torn, stone-washed jeans say "I'm stuck in 1988." Vocally there isn't much to the performance. It's slight and the only thing I'll remember is that at least she didn't do "Amazing Grace" again..
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: It wasn't her best performance for Randy, who calls it rough around the edges. Paula says that being sick is a good excuse, but she warns Kristy not to let circumstances get her down. Simon thinks the song didn't suit her and he calls Kristy robotic as well.

Singer: JOANNE BORGELLA
Song: "I Say a Little Prayer"
My Take: I think it's funny that Joanne wants to make it clear that even though she's a plus-sized African-American woman, it's acceptable for her to have the voice of a skinny white girl. No argument here. She flubs a lyric early on and it takes her a while to recover her baring. Joanne eventually rediscovers the melody, but the pacing of the song causes her trouble as well. Her voice is just a bit shrill for me.
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: Randy blames nerves for her rough start. Paula's doing a lot of rationalizing tonight, telling Joanne that she needs to pull it together. Simon didn't like it at all. "What you just did there was a very average cabaret version of a cabaret song," he says. Joanne's dad looks ready to kill Simon. Joanne looks like she's having trouble standing up.

Singer: ALAINA WHITAKER
Song: "More Today Than Yesterday"
My Take: All Alaina wants for her upcoming birthday is your vote and a nice pair of shoes. Kudos to Alaina for not seeing like a preternaturally mature 16-year-old girl. Nope. She's just a teenage girl. This is a more vocally interesting arrangement than the version that Chikezie did last night. It starts off dreamy and there are places where she's a bit sharp, but she's the first vocalist of the night not to look or sound like she's in a coma. She's not showy, but it's a simple and strong performance.
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: Randy says that once she got started, it was like goin' on. Paula thinks she nailed it, loving the ending in particular. "I think you're very good," says Simon, who doesn't know the song and gets even more confused when Paula starts mumbling about Spiral Staircase.

Singer: AMANDA OVERMYER
Song: "Baby Please Don't Go"
My Take: I respect Amanda's determination not to cover Janis Joplin anymore, though I think there were directions I might have preferred to see her take this theme. Amanda's facing one of the most aggressive musical arrangements I've ever heard on Idol, all guitars and drumming. It's amazing she's able to stand out at all. There isn't much melodically to the song, but she makes the most with what she's got. Her scatting lacks fluidity, but her voice is fantastic. I've said it before and I'll say it again: American Idol has never had a female rock vocalist like Amanda.
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: Randy loves her trousers and the whole performance. Paula says Amanda isn't a one-trick pony and she loves every bit of her. "I think you stand out in the crowd," Simon says of yet another song that he's never heard before.

Singer: AMY DAVIS
Song: "Where the Boys Are"
My Take: Amy really needs to be marketing herself as young, sexy and brassy, not as a singer of dated torch songs. She's dreadfully unsure of the melody and the song becomes a droning bore. There would have been some Idol seasons in which Amy could have coasted as The Hot Girl for a few weeks, but this is such a uniformly attractive group that she's probably doomed already
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: Randy accuses her of "scooping up to the notes." Paula says the camera loves her, but that the nerves and a poor song choice got to her. "You looked great, but you didn't sound great," Simon says.

Singer: BROOKE WHITE
Song: "Happy Together"
My Take: This is a more traditional version of the Golden Grahams theme than the one David Cook did last night. She doesn't have quite the voice for it, but Brooke aesthetically has something Carly Simon-esque about her. She was much more memorable in Hollywood with her keyboard and she's going to have to work to shake free of being That Perky Girl With the Dimples and the Sunny Disposition. That's not bad now, but it won't work long-term. If this season doesn't work out for them. Brooke and David Archuleta could hit the road in some sort of Osmond-style stage show.
Ron, Hermione and Simon Say: It started rough for Randy, but she worked it out, that she got "her slaying" on. Paula thinks Brooke has her own thing. Wait. What's that thing? I'm missing it. "There are times tonight that I feel like I'm in some commercial for washing up liquid," Simon says cryptically. He's disappointed that Brooke isn't heading to the dark side just yet. Ryan likes commercials for washing up liquids.

Check out the full flu-addled recap...

And check out all of my Idol coverage at Zap2it's Guide to American Idol.

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"American Idol" 02/19 Top 12 Men Perform

"People are saying that this year's talent is the best yet," host Ryan Seacrest says, kicking off Tuesday (Feb. 19) night's performances by the season's American Idol Top 12 Men. I guess that's why I'm weathering the flu to perform my recapping duties. If I miss somebody, it's 'cuz I went into a coma.

Singer: DAVID HERNANDEZ
Song: "In The Midnight Hour"
My Take: It's an odd gospel-inflected arrangement of the song and David looks to be getting a big dose of reverb, which actually helps his tone. Some of the affectations that bugged me from David's audition footage is absent here. There's no grunting or excessive falsetto. Until the end, he resists the urge to oversing (though he mangles that last note). He also resists the urge to move his feet once he gets to the middle of the stage.
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: Randy was "Like yo" and says he fell apart a bit at the end, but that it was still a good start to the night. The competition is on, Randy helpfully informs us. Paula calls his vocals brilliant and his vibrato perfect. It was better than Simon expected, though he urges David to loosen up a bit and to be distinct.

Singer: CHIKEZIE
Song: "I Love You More Today than Yesterday"
My Take: We can only assume that Chikezie got sick of people pronouncing his last name as "Easy" and dropped it entirely. What color would we say Chikezie's suit is? And how much weight has he lost? The Chikezie we met in San Diego was playfully round. I'm not sure I'd even recognize this guy. I think he's lost 10 pounds since the Idol party last Thursday. Meanwhile, if I seem to be getting distracted by external factors, there's a reason. Nothing Chikezie does is good enough or bad enough to draw my attention -- he's got better stage presence than David, but his vocals fall short.
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: We made it to the second performance of the year before Randy whips out his first "It was aight." He accuses Chikezie of being old-fashioned. Chikezie's come a long way and he's here, Paula opines, in one of those statements that you couldn't disagree with even if you wanted to. Chikezie's weight-loss earns near-tears from Paula. Simon calls him "Jacuzzi" and says he absolutely hated the whole performance. "To be honest with you, this could have been something we filmed 40 years ago," Simon says. Chikezie tries correcting Simon's understanding of his performance. Talking back to Simon at this stage in the competition is never a good idea.

Singer: DAVID COOK
Song: "Happy Together"
My Take: Even after the elimination of his soul patch, David's fashion style looks to be "hobo chic." He's singing my favorite Golden Grahams theme. The arrangement is initially spacey and eventually rock-y and David does better in the latter mode. He's trying to do the Constantine eye-flirt, getting all squinty whenever the camera comes in his direction. David is the night's first singer to have to fight to compete with the band, but after getting downed out in the middle, he comes through OK. Is anybody going to point out that David's floppy hair is a comb-over and he's nearly bald underneath?
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: It was a little weird for Randy at first, but he worked it out. Paula calls it worthy of great praise. Simon thought he shouted in the middle, but that he almost made the arrangement of the song believable.

Singer: JASON YEAGER
Song: "Moon River"
My Take: Jason Yeager seems to have a 15-year-old son. Even if the kid is really eight or nine, it only reinforces my feeling that Jason is a middle-aged man in a competition that values youth and he doesn't help matter by doing the most old-fashioned rendition of "Moon River" imaginable. We've had three straight attempts to rearrange the '60s songs in different contexts, but Jason goes straight-up Andy Williams, which isn't surprising for a guy who's been making his living in Branson. The tooth-y smile and welcoming arm gestures are pure schmaltz and Jason descends into a near-whisper by the end.
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: Randy says that all the guys can blow, but that Jason's concentration wavered. Paula did her first ballet recital to "Moon River," so it's got sentimental value. "I bought my first puppy to that song," says Simon before calling very "cruise ship," warning that it will confuse younger viewers. "You're like a dependable old dog, aren't you?" Simon asks. Jason is mighty gracious when it comes to the criticism.

Singer: ROBBIE CARRICO
Song: "One"
My Take: Robbie is 26, but he's an old 26. He looks like a man in his second or third act. "One" is a change-of-pace song more than a piece to prove your rocker credentials, no matter what Robbie's bandana, pocket chain, and leather wristlets might be trying to argue. It's like he's auditioning to play the role of Bo Bice in a road show version of Idol and he thinks the key to winning the part is wearing sufficient flair. Robbie has some pacing problems with the band, but doesn't make any dramatic vocal gaffes.
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: Randy says it's a nice one and had him rocking out. Paula thinks it was a prefect song. Simon says it's the night's first current performance. Simon isn't sure how authentic he is.

Singer: DAVID ARCHULETA
Song: "Shop Around"
My Take: Say this for David Archuleta -- he doesn't look like he's an old man. I'm not sure I'd have recommended this as a song choice, but David is instantly more memorable than the four -- Five? Six? Three? I've already begun to tune them out -- men who preceded him. He has good camera awareness and plays to the audience without seeming cloying. He doesn't show very much vocal range and he has some rough high notes toward the end, but does anybody honestly believe this guy isn't going to be around through May? Maybe by that time we'll see if he performs every song with the same semi-robotic enthusiasm.
Randy, Paula and Simon (witty name swapping to start tomorrow) say: Randy thought that was really brilliant and mature. "I'm like yo, this kid is ready to go," Randy says. Paula thought the song choice was brave and bold. "When you've got it, you've got it," Simon says. David's "Oh shucks" stuttering will get tired in a hurry, but for now it looks genuine.

But wait... This feels like only half a recap! Check out the full version over at Zap2it.

And if you want some indication of why I've been neglectful to this blog, check out Zap2it's Guide to American Idol.

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MovieWatch: "Jumper"

"Jumper"
Director: Doug Liman
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 27
In a Nutshell: I'm having a weekend of appendix movies.

I mean "appendix" in the vestigial organ sense, rather than the "thing at the end of a book" sense.

On Friday night, I watched "The Invasion" from Netflix. For at least an hour, I was convinced that "The Invasion" had gotten a really bum rap when it opened in August to dismissive reviews and minimal box office. Yes, it was another remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" that the world didn't necessarily need, but it was made with an effective chilly alienation and the tension was developing effectively. I even liked Nicole Kidman's performance, if only because she's become an absolute master at playing semi-Stepford women. Then, in the last 30 minutes, the movie suddenly becomes a jumbled mess of poorly staged chase scenes and sequences which visually don't match with the style of the rest of the movie. Even if I hadn't know that the movie was, indeed, directed first by Oliver Hirschbiegel and was then essentially redirected by James McTeigue, I'd have figured it was directed by two people. I *think* I liked Hirschbiegel's version and was offended by the inter-splicing of McTeigue's, but since I quite enjoyed "V for Vendetta," it's possible that it was the other way around.

Either way, the good work of "The Invasion" is eventually undone by the vestigial traces of another movie poking out at the edges.

The same is true of "Jumper," though Doug Liman's movie has almost none of that good work and it totally overpowered by the sense that it's trying to be a half-dozen different failed movies at once.

Follow through after the bump for a full review...

Click through...

There are three credited screenwriters on "Jumper," bringing Steven Gould's book to the big screen. David Goyer ("Batman Begins"), Jim Uhls ("Fight Club") and Simon Kinberg ("Mr. & Mrs. Smith") have all done good work before and it's somewhat possible that individually they all did good drafts of a "Jumper" script, but the final result is filmmaking through a blender.

Doug Liman can't be blameless in this mess, though his track record is the main reason I went to see the movie in the first place. "Swingers," "Go," "The Bourne Identity" and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" all have places in my DVD collection, as does the pilot to "The O.C." I'd say the guy has probably built up enough good faith to weather "Jumper," particularly since it seems on its way to opening solidly, the wastefulness of "Jumper" is near epic.

The stories of the production are part of the public record. Liman was going to direct a relatively expensive adaptation of the book with a cast of relative unknowns. The studio wanted a name to sell the movie and in came the black hole of charisma known as Hayden Christensen [Did George Lucas destroy the guy from "Shattered Glass" and even "Life as a House" forever?]. Then, already into shooting, Liman decided he wanted a new romantic lead and in came Rachel Bilson. The movie is just glutted with actors, characters and trace subplots that must have been from an earlier script, from an earlier version of the movie.

The premise is basic, cool and completely unexplained. Young David has a near-death experience and discovers he can teleport. The end. He leaves his old life and goes off to another one, fueled by the cash he makes breaking into banks. Fair enough. That's fun stuff and it ought to open the door for a wealth of subtext about approaching young adulthood and the initial sense that your world is suddenly without boundaries followed by the inevitable realization that with freedom comes responsibility and that you really can't go anywhere and do anything as you may once have fantasized. That theme, which HAD to have run through one of the three versions of the script, is almost nowhere to be found in the final "Jumper," which is all plot. Jumper David is on the run from Samuel Jackson, who's out to kill him (and has no character to speak of other than that). Period.

As befits a movie about people capable of jumping through space without the actual process of physical travel, "Jumper" skips from event to event without any requirements of logic. In order for three-quarters of the movie to make a bit of sense, you have to accept that the main character -- having just had a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson break into his home, expose his secret, kick his butt and sent him scurrying off into the world as a refugee -- would find that the perfect time to go back to him hometown to rekindle affections with the girl he regretted leaving years earlier. Then you have to accept that, after carrying around the guilt of perhaps being at least partly responsible for the death of her classmate, said girl would greet said boy with romantic interest and enthusiasm and make no mention of the eight years he'd vanished. Once you've gone that far, you'd have even less trouble dealing with his decision, less than a day after his run-in with Sam Jack, to whisk his lady love off to Rome for hotel nookie and an illicit tour of the Coliseum.

A casting note: I was thrown into a weird loop right from the beginning, when Young Hayden Christensen is played by Max Thieriot, who looks a lot like Christensen and appeared to be 16 or 17, but young Rachel Bilson is played by AnnaSophia Robb, who looks 13 or 14. Then, since Christensen doesn't appear much older than 21 or 22 himself, I was barely sure how much time had passed (eight years, according to the dialogue) or how old the characters were and whether they were supposed to be peers, since Bilson comes across as much more mature than Christensen on screen. It's really just a mess.

Bilson was a late addition to the cast and given just how little of a character she has to play, it's almost mind-boggling to imagine how much worse the entire movie would have felt with a less charming leading lady. She acting opposite a brick wall -- Christensen is affectless to a Keanu-esque degree -- and reciting banal dialogue in a part that might as well not even have a name, but she's still adorable and impressively capable of getting laughs straight-lines.

She deserves to be in a better movie as does Jamie Bell, playing a more experienced jumper with a personal vendetta. Unless I'm misremembering, Bell's character arc is never resolved and in a sequel, Christensen could probably be jettisoned, leaving the action to good ol' Billy Elliot.

If Bilson and Bell deserve a better movie, Diane Lane pops up seemingly out of a different movie entirely. Her presence is spoiled in the opening credits, where she gets a "with" credit. She appears thrice -- once in a flashback, once in an unexplained plot contrivance and once for unmotivated exposition (along with a distracting cameo from the Little Boy From "Panic Room" [Kristen Stewart]). The character serves no purpose to the narrative and there's no reason why an actress of Lane's Oscar nominated caliber needed to be playing the part.

Then again, she's not alone. In a career characterized by an eagerness to do any role whatsoever for money, this may be the worst role Jackson has ever taken. He has white hair. That's it. Hand's up if you were craving a Mace Windu/ Anakin Skywalker reunion? Didn't think so.

On a technical level, "Jumper" looks fine and Barry Peterson's cinematography does a fine job of capturing the amount of Rupert Murdoch's money that Liman was wasting on location work. Tokyo? Cairo? Rome? London? For all it served the film, they could have shot on a green screen and CGIed in Mars.

The CGI jumping effects start out interesting, but since the physics of jumping are never explored, I wondered why the characters caused variable damage to the places they were jumping to and from. And the film's money shot -- the double-decker bus flipping in the middle of the desert -- is thrown away like it's no more important than Jar Jar Binks.

Sigh. I went back to the movies for *this*?

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Belated Top 10 Films of 2007: Part I

Since 2006 was the only year that I spent as a full-time, see-every-movie film critic, that was the only year that I felt any inclination to deliver a Top 10 list in an orderly, end-of-year fashion. I all other years, I've accepted that just because a year reaches its end doesn't mean I've seen enough films from the year in question to put together a viable list.

Sometimes you're holding out for good movies, but other years you're wading through piles of awful DVDs that you're only watching so that you can feel you've given adequate time to the year's cinematic breadth and depth.

In this year's case, I was holding off until I'd seen "300." And I was holding off on "300" until I had a TV up to the task of doing minor justice to the movie. Having decided that my new 42" Vizio would do that job, I finally made it through "300" the other day and while it won't make my Top 10 list, it was a necessary speedbump.

Lists like this are a bit silly because if you're a regular or even semi-regular reader, you know what movie will be No. 1. If it's Roger Ebert composing the list and he's given 4 stars to 50 different movies this year, it's tough to know which one is going to be No. 1 ("Juno," in this year's case). But my ridiculous 100-point system is a spoiler.

But if No. 1 was easy, No. 10 was really a pain in my butt. I had many more films worthy of being No. 10 than I had of being No. 5 and the difference between No. 10 and No. 5 is completely negligible. Distinction-without-a-difference aside, I *did* put the movies in some sort of order and I only cheated with a single tie.

Follow through past the bump for the first half of my Top 10. The second half will follow when it's completed...

Click through...

No.10-20 (in no particular order): "Juno," "Breach," "Hot Fuzz," "Sunshine," "The Orphanage," "Away From Here," "Ratatouille," "Gone Baby Gone," "Eastern Promises" and, at No. 11, "3:10 to Yuma."

10) "Waitress" (dir. Adrienne Shelley) -- As "Waitress" became one of the few indie hits of the summer, the dark and sarcastic side of me (*yes* there is another side) reckoned that if Adrienne Shelly hadn't died tragically, nobody ever would have noticed the movie at all, that its success was somewhat ghoulish. That was part of what kept me from seeing "Waitress" in theaters. Having finally caught up with the movie, which is contrived and slight at times, but irresistible as a whole, I guess it's something that people saw the movie at all and that audiences were able to appreciate, however briefly and however late, that Shelly was, indeed, a gifted storyteller and an potentially impressive filmmaker. Shelly's gifts as a screenwriter exceed her abilities as a visual filmmaker and the "Waitress" script wildly cute and genuine and distinctive, but she also had a gift with actors and the performance by Keri Russell is as winning as they come. I would have loved to have seen Shelley's script and the performances by Russell and Andy Griffith get more Oscar attention than they did.

9) "The Bourne Ultimatum" (dir. Peter Greengrass) -- I still think that "Supremacy" and "Identity" are both better "Bourne" films than this summer's "Ultimatum." The attempts to close out certain mysteries from Jason Bourne's past are a bit clumsy, as is the weird/shocking revelation about Bourne's past with the character played by Julia Stiles. But I've watched "Ultimatum" twice now on DVD (once for the commentary) and the Waterloo Station game of cat-and-mouse, the chase through Tangiers and the maneuvering through Manhattan remain every bit as viscerally magnificent as they were in the theater. The set pieces in the first two movies are equally resilient, which is part of why I'd be happy for them to keep making a new "Bourne" film every four or five years, whenever Matt Damon -- so assertive, so subtle -- needs the money.

8) "There Will Be Blood" (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) -- This is a weird one, because "TWBB" came perilously close to not making my Top 10 at all. Then, though, having decided to put it in at No. 10, I started playing a game of "Are you honestly going to try to say 'Film A' is better than 'TWBB'?" That started a process wherein "TWBB" crept up my list. Well, the creep stops here. With "TWBB," the question comes down to the gap between how much I respected the movie and how much I really appreciated it. Perhaps the thing I liked most about Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love" is that it was a movie where the ambitions were positively bursting from the seams of a 90-minute comedy. With things like "Magnolia" and "There Will Be Blood," though, Anderson seems determined first to expand the movie to a length that justifies his thematic scope and then to underline the thematic score just to justify the length. What I'm saying is that "TWBB" is a massive movie, so Shakespearean or Biblical in its tragic scale that every line of dialogue is thuddingly subtextual (GREED!!! AMBITION!!! FAITH!!! MILKSHAKES!!!) and every actor shouts every line in case you didn't get the point. Daniel Day-Lewis is great, but it's not a performance that lets you discover its greatness in small steps. He arrives snorting and popping blood vessels and letting every line of dialogue rip from someplace deep inside. He sets the tone for every shot of the movie, for good and semi-ill.

7) "The Lookout" (dir. Scott Frank) -- I went back and watched "The Lookout" on DVD to make sure that I wasn't just particularly susceptible to its brand of densely plotted Midwestern noir when I saw it back in the spring. It played with a bit less power than I initially remembered, but that was only enough to push it out of my Top 5. Some viewers were disappointed by "The Lookout" and many critics were disappointed because it didn't deliver quite enough twists and turns in its final act. Nothing that happened was really shocking. Unlike, say, the movie above it on this list, "The Lookout" is a movie that keeps its intentions and its urges muted. For me, "The Lookout" was a character study in which the heist was incidental and treated as such. Joseph Gordon Levitt has now has "Mysterious Skin," "Brick" and this film hit theaters in consecutive years and it's hard to think of a young actor who has developed a comparable body of work with less mainstream media hype (stories about "Stop Loss" will STILL probably call Levitt the kid from "Third Rock"). I also liked the "Lookout" performances from Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels and Isla Fisher. This may be the biggest oddball choice in my Top 10, but I think this is a movie that viewers will discover down the road at some point and I look forward to seeing Scott Frank try his hand at directing again.

6) "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (dir. Andrew Dominik) -- Dominik is obviously stealing from the Early Terrence Malick Playbook here, while missing one fact: "Badlands" was 95 minutes, "Days of Heaven" was 94 minutes and it takes nearly two hours to even recite the title of "Assassination." I kid, but "Assassination" could have held to its status as the most gorgeously shot film of 2007 (my cinematography Oscar goes to Roger Deakins), could have maintained its twisty character portrait of both celebrity and celebrity obsession (Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck are marvelous) and could have remained lyrical, haunting and tragic with a run-time of at least 30 minutes less than its theatrical 160 minute duration. A shorter version certainly would have made my Top 5 and maybe would have challenged for the top spot. I think you could, in fact, have lost 30 minutes without losing the great supporting work by folks like Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, Sam Shepard, Jeremy Renner and Sam Rockwell. This wasn't a movie that over-estimated its worth, only miscalculated the best way to accentuate that worth. It's a very, very good movie that could have been great. For the purposes of this list, though, it's one to treasure.

Stay tuned for the Top 5. It'll probably appear by the end of the weekend. Knock on wood.

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Best and Worst Best Actor Oscar Winners

Another winter, another best/worth Oscar survey courtesy of Edward Copeland on Film, the always admirable blog that brought you the best and worst best picture winners two years ago and the best and worst best actress winners last year.

This year's survey? True to form, we're on to best actor! I look forward to the period 15 years from now when we can finally tear into the best and worst sound editing Oscar winners.

On the surface, this is probably the easiest of the surveys to date. Roberto Benigni's win for "Life Is Beautiful" is an embarrassment from which the Academy will never fully recover. His isn't just the worst performance ever given a best actor Oscar, it's the worst acting performance of any size for any gender ever given an Oscar.

As for the best best actor, even though he won't get my first-place vote, I can't see any circumstance under which Robert DeNiro doesn't win for "Raging Bull." It's more Method than Method. It's METHOd with capitals M-E-T-H-and-O.

Let's just say that I had an easier time with the Worst than the best. That's the sort of guy I am.

If you have opinions of your own, send 'em on to Eddie (contest rules and requirements available here).

Follow through after the bump for my Best 5 and Worst 5.

Click through...

Worst Best Actor Preamble: One of the things I have to take into account here is who these undeserving winners beat. These aren't just the Worst Best Actor winners because their performances were awful. They're the worst because in winning, they kept other superior performances from winning.

My Picks:

5) Jimmy Stewart for "The Philadelphia Story." Yes. I know. This won't be a popular vote. I love Jimmy Stewart. I love "The Philadelphia Story." Heck, I love Jimmy Stewart *in* "The Philadelphia Story." I just don't get the prism through which this likeable and charming performance is Oscar-worthy (I also voted for Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday" last year for the exact same reason). Stewart didn't get Oscar nominations for "How the West Was Won," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "Rear Window" or "Vertigo," but of the five nominations he *did* get, this is the least interesting of his performances and I think this being his Oscar win is almost a disservice to his career legacy. I should also add that Stewart's win here probably came at the expense of the best performance of Henry Fonda's career in "Grapes of Wrath," which led to Fonda taking the 1982 best actor win away from both Burt Lancaster and Warren Beatty. With Oscar, it's a vicious circle. Or a slippery slope.

4) Yul Brynner for "The King and I." In the 1950s and 1960s, movies were getting insecure about their place in the entertainment landscape and the Academy fell into a weird rut attempting to prove its prestige by reaffirming praise on a bunch of Tony-winning performances brought to the big screen with only minor alterations. I quite like Paul Scofield's "A Man for All Seasons" performance. Ditto with Jose Ferrer's "Cyrano" turn. But Brynner and Rex Harrison (for "My Fair Lady") are examples of performances that weren't reformatted very well for the big screen. Brynner barks to the back row of the theater for two hours, which becomes mighty boring, though he and Deborah Kerr do dance very nicely together. Probably the best performance he beat that year was Kirk Douglas for "Lust for Life," though James Dean's work in "Giant" has some fans.

3) Art Carney for "Harry and Tonto." This is what I was talking about when I said that sometimes the worst winners aren't the worst because they're bad (Carney is very touching), but because of who they beat. In this case, Carney took best actor from Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown," Al Pacino in "The Godfather II" and possibly the best performance of Dustin Hoffman's career in "Lenny."

2) Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman." Much of the blame here probably has to go to director Martin Brest. We all know that Pacino is capable of being understated and magnificent just as surely as he's capable of being bug-eyed and shouty and I think his Col. Frank Slade could have gone either way except that Brest must have kept encouraging him to go bigger... Bigger... BIGGER! This movie is like a greatest hits montage of Pacino's least subtle acting decisions -- the compulsive sneering, the inexplicable line-barking, the eyes that are meant to be both crazy and inexpressive. The win encouraged all of Pacino's worst tendencies -- has he given more than two or three good performances since? -- and rewarded one of our very best actors at his very worst. Plus, it wasn't like Pacino beat a weak field that year. Robert Downey Jr. for "Chaplin," Stephen Rea for "The Crying Game," Denzel for "Malcolm X" and Clint Eastwood for "Unforgiven" all were robbed.

1) Roberto Benigni for "Life Is Beautiful." Something very weird happened to award voters in the winter of 1998. It's one thing that they became entranced by a mediocre Italian comedian and his grossly superficial and sappy Holocaust comedy, but they also became really amused by what said Italian comedian would do if they kept giving him awards. It was like a psychotic babysitter thinking it was cool to give a six-year-old coffee and Pixie Stix knowing that the kid would be the parents' responsibility later. And, best/worst of all, Benigni willingly played monkey to Hollywood's elite, finding new ways of humiliating himself with each new ceremony, much to the ongoing terror of Helen Hunt, who had to keep presenting him with trophies. Meanwhile, Edward Norton ("American History X"), Nick Nolte ("Affliction") and Ian McKellen ("Gods and Monsters") had to keep watching this pea-brained Pagliacci urinate all over what should have been a competitive race just because his mere presence doubtlessly made Jack Nicholson giggle. I'd bet dollars to donuts that none of the people who voted for Benigni bothered to watch his "Pinocchio," but they all should have been strapped to a chair for the full experience -- dubbed and undubbed.

And now on to my much less passionate listing of...



The Best Best Actor Winners.

5) James Cagney for "Yankee Doodle Dandy." He sings! He dances! He emotes! He plays a real person! Seriously, how could Oscar voters not swoon? If you could bottle Cagney's energy in this film, you could power a small Midwestern town for a year.

4) Gregory Peck for "To Kill a Mockingbird." No offense to Harper Lee, but the reason why kids have spent 45 years wishing Atticus Finch was their father and why criminal defendants (particularly unjustly accused ones) have spent 45 years wishing Atticus Finch was their lawyer has everything to do with Gregory Peck. Perhaps no actor in history has ever played dignity and righteousness as well as Peck, with his rumbling voice and gentle-yet-fiery eyes. This is one of those performances that you can't imagine being improved upon. Or at least I can't. If not for Peck, my own high school turn as Atticus Finch would probably be the definitive interpretation of the role. My Southern accent was very convincing.

3) Robert DeNiro in "Raging Bull." Just cuz I'm not putting it at No. 1 doesn't mean I don't respect the snot out of this showy piece of acting, much moreso than I respect the overall movie it's in, actually.

2) Marlon Brando for "On the Waterfront." This is a performance that's a bit over-celebrated, to the extent that you can only see the iconic scenes and you often lose the quieter, less famous moments that make the movie. To some degree, Brando at that moment was like Wilt Chamberlain when he averaged 50 points-per-game for a season or Babe Ruth when he was hitting more home runs than most teams. He was simply playing a different game. Look at what Brando was doing and compare him to his Oscar competition that year, people like Bing Crosby for "The Country Girl" and James Mason for "A Star Is Born." It's like a whole other game.

1) Daniel Day-Lewis for "My Left Foot." This is a showy, Oscar-ready role and, pardon my French, Day-Lewis acts the shit out of it.

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Belated Oscar Nomination Reax

[The first half of this reaction piece was written Tuesday morning. I put it aside after lunch because I thought that writing about Heath Ledger was, frankly, more important. Apologies...

Then I was swamped with conference calls yesterday.

Really, I might as well not be posting this at all, except that I put a few minute's work into it and I might as well feed the blog.]

It used to be that I'd never miss an Oscar nomination announcement. I only attended once in person, but I've generally woken up, even at 5 a.m. since I moved to the West Coast, to get a first glimpse at all the nominees.

This year, even though insomnia had be up and mostly awake at 4 a.m., I didn't wander into my living room and turn on the TV. When I actually rolled out of bed at 7, I showered and downed an energy drink before booting up my computer and checking the nominations.

My reactions in general can be summed up with a resounding, "Eh." And a shrug. Thanks to the strike and the cancellation of the Golden Globes, this award season has been a wee bit muted, but that doesn't mean that the candidates haven't been shuffled and reshuffled and dealt and re-dealt so many different ways that it's almost inconceivable for anything to be a true surprise.

Tommy Lee Jones sneaking in and grabbing a best actor nomination? No surprise. For "In the Valley of Elah"? Well, that's a surprise, but it's Tommy Lee Jones.

Cate Blanchett picking up that bizarro second nomination for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"? Well, that's a surprise, but it's Cate Blanchett.

I'll do my full "Should Win/Will Win" break-down in February in the days leading up to the Oscars.

But follow through after the bump for some basic reactions...

Click through...

The first thing that needs to be said is that to variable degrees, I liked all of the Best Picture nominees. Or I certainly didn't dislike any of them. That's a rare occurrence. I'm accustomed to being able to root against a "Crash" or "Little Miss Sunshine," albeit with only variable success. Not so much, this year. Whenever I get around to writing my Top 10 list -- still catching up on a few more essentials -- "No Country For Old Men" is a lock to be No. 1 and "Atonement" is almost certain to be in the Top 5, no matter how much that infuriates certain of my colleagues. "Juno" may crack the bottom of the Top 10 and, as its lack of review here suggests, I'm still unable to fully process "There Will Be Blood." But I know that as much as it felt like getting beaten over a head with a mallet, I appreciated a lot of it. And even the chilliness I got off of "Michael Clayton" wasn't enough to cause me active disapprobation. It's just a taste thing.



That's why I have to go to best actor and best actress to find things to root against. Devoted readers and people who have been stuck sitting next to me at any recent point know my feelings for Johnny Depp's "Sweeney Todd" performance. It isn't that I dislike Depp or will begrudge him the Oscar that he will one day win. I'd just have preferred that at least a half-dozen actors grab nominations instead of Depp for what is essentially a one-expression, one-note (literally) performance defined more by hair and make-up than acting.

Oh and on the Tommy Lee Jones issue... Yes, it's a darned odd nomination. Folks didn't see "In the Valley of Elah," much less like it. But here's something I hadn't paid much attention to: While Jones is considered one of those "Everything he does is Oscar-worthy" actors, he hasn't been nominated since winning for "The Fugitive," which was a looooong time ago now. His performance is actually the opposite of Depp's. It looked one-note and taciturn, but it really isn't.

Anyway, I'm railing against Depp and I'm going WAY against the tide on Marion Cotillard, whose slouching and twitching and lip-synching (would that Depp had also lip-synched) moved me less than it moved some other people.

Time to steal from some weekly magazine and whip out my Cheers, Jeers and Confused Shrugs from the nominations...

CHEERS -- Viggo Mortensen's nomination, his first. While "Eastern Promise" remains hamstrung by its final act, Mortensen's performance is the year's best by an actor. Yes, better than Daniel Day-Lewis' magnificent hamminess in "There Will Be Blood."

JEERS -- We all knew that Julian Schnabel was breaking into the best director field for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," a movie that had me rolling both of my good eyes in my sockets for the better part of an hour of increasingly mind-numbing pretentiousness. Sorry. But everybody figured "Juno" would be this year's "Film that directed itself." Instead, Joe Wright got left out for the often gloriously epic orchestration of "Atonement," a technical marvel of scale and depth. And Jason Reitman was nominated for keeping Diablo Cody's script moving. That's just weird.

CONFUSED SHRUG -- I haven't seen "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," but even in the trailer, Cate Blanchett does a lot of shouting to the back row. If the Academy was going for showy and obvious, I'd have greatly preferred a nomination for Amy Adams. If "Enchanted" had made $150 million at the box office, she'd have been nominated. Guarantee. It just wasn't a big hit and so there was no momentum for her to ride.

CHEERS -- I love a supporting actress field that contains both Ruby Dee and Saorise Ronan. That's diversity. Actually, that's a bit of a joke. Beyond Dee, the nomination field is about as lily-white as we've come to expect from the Academy. But in terms of age? You've got Ronan and Ellen Page on one end Dee and Hal Holbrook on the other. So that's *something*.

JEERS -- You know how I said that Amy Adams would have gotten a nomination except that the movie didn't make enough money? Well how the heck did "Enchanted" get three song nominations? I remember the one with the vermin cleaning house, but that's it. Heck, I'd have rather seen one Eddie Vedder's mopey "Into the Wild" songs make it. Just one.

CONFUSED SHRUG -- Love it or hate it, Jonny Greenwood's score for "There Will Be Blood" was more closely tied to the overall make-up of the movie than any other combination of score and film all year. The Academy's decision to deem it ineligible at the last minute is just another predictable embarrassment from a group that just can't stay out of its own way some years.

CHEERS -- He may split the votes with himself leaving the Oscar for the blurry artiness of "Diving Bell," but Roger Deakins' pair of nominations for "No Country for Old Men" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" couldn't be more deserved. And while I'm at it, good for "Roderick Jayes" picking up an editing nomination and giving the Coens nods for directing, producing, writing and editing the year's best movie. Also, on an unrelated note, I'm glad to see Sarah Polley pick up an adapted screenplay nomination for "Away From Her." She's crazy-talented.

JEERS -- If there was a place for "Norbit" to get one nomination, there had to be a place for "Zodiac" to get a nomination. Anywhere. Adapted screenplay? Cinematography? Score? Supporting actor? Heck, production design or costuming?

CONFUSED SHRUG -- Did the nominating voters watch more than five minutes of "Surf's Up"? Because for five minutes, it was funny an innovative. It became intolerable really soon after that. Surely with $200 million in the bank, "Alvin and the Chipmunks" deserved a little recognition. That's a joke. Mostly.

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Heath Ledger, 1979-2008

Like everybody else in the entertainment journalism racket, I spent much of this afternoon trying to think of Heath Ledger anecdotes, trying to be one of those obnoxious people -- Tom O'Neil, I'm looking at you -- who attempt to fabricate a cause for a 28-year-old man's death out of a five minute interview I did at some junket, an interview that was probably #137 out of #673 for the day on his schedule.

It turns out that I couldn't do it.

I only interviewed Ledger once, back in the summer of 2005 as part of a small roundtable for Terry Gilliam's miscalculated "The Brothers Grimm." Paired with Matt Damon for the interview, Ledger was nearly silent. Damon was the polished showman, the Journalist's Actor, always handy with a quote and a smart rejoinder. Ledger was more of a grunter, giving quick and terse answers. When some actors do that, you think they're rude, that they're better than the dog-and-pony-show process. With Ledger, the only impression we got was that he didn't like talking about himself or about his craft because he just wasn't sure what to say. It was three months before the "Brokeback Mountain" buzz had really begun and somebody asked him about the movie and he was genuinely unsure how it was going to play. He was confident that the work had been worthwhile, but not willing to play premature pundit and start raving. He was only an actor, not a self-publicist.

It's too early to know for sure what took Ledger's life, though the media was sure quick to jump to "SUICIDE!!!!" speculation. That's just what we do, I guess. And I guess I can't blame the utterly asinine and unqualified arm chair shrinks who went on CNN and gave out-of-context Ledger quotes about how playing the Joker in "The Dark Knight" left him with difficulties sleeping. Tom O'Neil thought he seemed antsy?!?!? Print it. Geez.

Anyway, I'll let the vultures discuss things they aren't credentialed to discuss.

After the bump, I have a few quotes from my own reviews on Ledger's performances, some excellent, some misguided, never boring.

Click through...

To my mind, Heath Ledger was a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. He was like Alec Baldwin in that respect and may have eventually had a similar sort of career arc. Hollywood wanted him to put on armor and win the girl, like in "A Knight's Tale," or to take his place alongside Mel Gibson in "The Patriot." If you look at his studio star turns, though, the only time he was ever 100% comfortable was in "10 Things I Hate About You," a film and performance of effortless charm and dexterity that probably won't get mentioned enough in the days to come. But if he didn't seem like he wanted to be the A-lister toplining "The Four Feathers" or "The Order," he was always able to step into the background and be fourth of fifth billed, but far more interesting, in films like "Monster's Ball."

My first year on the Zap2it movie beat was 2005, a year that saw four very different Ledger performances.

Here's what I said at the time...

On "Lords of Dogtown" : "The film's most striking performances come from Rebecca DeMornay and Heath Ledger. DeMornay, stripped of makeup and actorly ego as Jay's loving, but somewhat daffy Beach Betty mom, is so sympathetic and stabilizing that the film suffers when she's off-screen for extended periods. The same is true of Ledger, who vanishes entirely into Skip's facial hair, teeth and surfer dude speech patterns, delivering the finest Val Kilmer performance the "Top Gun" star never gave."


On "The Brothers Grimm" : "As he did in "Lords of Dogtown" earlier this summer, Ledger finds a previously hidden vein of Val Kilmer, creating a character from wisps of facial hair, funny glasses, a silly accent and an assortment of wild gestures borrowed, it seems, from the film's director. He's very funny, but in taking the comic path, he cheapens the character's credulity, which should be the heart of the film."

On "Brokeback Mountain" : Ledger is truly the film's star, even thought Ennis is as introverted and socially awkward a man as you'll ever meet. Ennis can't really speak or relate to either men or women and as much as desire leads him to Jack, he's equally drawn by the fact that with this other man, he can occasionally smile and joke and let down his guard, step away from the pressure of trying to be the solitary and silent Marlboro man. That Ledger gives Ennis a voice that sounds like the drawling amalgamation of countless Western heroes is intentional. He's trying to be John Wayne on the surface, even if the outside world and his own inner needs clash with that image. In one role after another this year, Ledger has campaigned to avoid movie star status and just be respected as an actor, but this is the first time his promise is fulfilled.


On "Casanova" : For his part, Ledger is superficially charming and little more. This is exactly the kind of generic pretty boy part that he attempted to move away from after "A Knight's Tale." It's enough that he looks the part, because he delivers every line with the same bemused detachment.

The only film in which he was truly bad was "Casanova," which must have seemed like the most commercial of the projects. But Ledger was learning. From what we've seen, his Joker in "The Dark Knight" looked unbearably creepy and psychotic and he was finishing another film with Terry Gilliam which -- let's face it -- might not have been any good, but it probably wouldn't have been boring. We'll miss out on the evolution of an actor who wanted to grow. That's sad.

I'm not good at these tribute things, so I'll stop now...

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MovieWatch: "Cloverfield"

"Cloverfield"
Director: Matt Reeves
Fien Print Rating (Out of 100): 64
In a Nutshell: The first thing that's got to be said is that as "hype-over-substance" movies, "Cloverfield" has a lot more going for itself than, say, "The Blair Witch Project" or "Snakes on a Plane," but it may be lower in its ambitions and aesthetic aims than, say, "Grindhouse."

It's an utter mystery why the "Cloverfield" formula -- cultivate fandom in the J.J. Abrams cult community and paper the world with your ads and trailers -- appears on its way to actually paying big dividends ($16.75 million opening day), while "Snakes on a Plane" effectively tanked. It may have something to do with the fact that "Snakes on a Plane" had one thing and only one things going for it: The best title ever.

"Cloverfield," in contrast, has a meaningless title, but it's done that one thing that films like "Independence Day" and "Armageddon" were able to do, but duds like the Emmerich "Godzilla" couldn't: It's found its money shot early and milked that sucker for all it was worth. So what that it stole the essence of its money shot from "Planet of the Apes," people respond to iconographic American institutions in peril. We cared before 9/11 and we probably care extra-much now. So that shot of the Statue of Liberty's head bouncing through the street and the poster image of the headless Statue? That's what's made money for "Cloverfield." The online obsessives will take credit, but people who can't even check their e-mail went to go see "Cloverfield" because of the Statue.

I wonder if either audience -- the online obsessives and the ones who just went for the carnage -- is going to be completely satisfied.

More after the bump...

Click through...


Before talking more about the movie, I have a couple letter perceptual bones to pick...

While there appears to be general and wide-spread confusion as to who Matt Reeves is, in addition to the tangential conviction that he *must* be a pseudonym for J.J. Abrams, I like to periodically mention that back in college, my very first press junket as a semi-journalist was "The Pallbearer," which simultaneously was supposed to be David Schwimmer's big break as a leading man, Gwyneth Paltrow's big break as a romantic leading lady and Michael Vartan's first turn as a prominent supporting player. That was actually two years before Reeves co-created "Felicity" with Abrams and, as a result, I was like the only person on earth who thought of "Felicity" as "The Matt Reeves Show," because I simply had a better idea of who he was. So Matt Reeves is a real person. He directed this movie. It isn't J.J. Abrams' "Cloverfield." J.J. Abrams is one man who gets an awful lot of credit for things he puts his name, but he can't be everywhere doing everything, can he? It's not like he's Jerry Bruckheimer.

Anywho... Next axe to grind.

The number of articles and reviews that I've skimmed referring the "Cloverfield" having a "cast of unknowns." Lizzy Caplan has been a regular on three or four network TV shows. T.J. Miller is currently (sortta) appearing on a network TV show. Odette Yustman is currently starring on a network TV show and Mike Vogel and Jessica Lucas and Mike Vogel have also appeared on multiple TV shows in prominent roles. I have to admit that I didn't remember who Michael Stahl-David was until I glanced at his IMDB bio, but then I went, "Oh yeah. He was Sean on 'The Black Donnellys." But nearly every member of the cast was *completely* known. Unproven? Absolutely. But to my mind, a movie critic who has never seen or heard of the cast members of "Cloverfield" is as bad as a major league beat writer who suddenly looks in left field, sees some new guy and calls him an "unknown," even if he'd been the team's top prospect for four years. Worse, actually, because TV isn't the minor leagues for movies. I'm just saying that audiences might not necessarily know all of the stars of "Cloverfield," but any movie critic who can't identify many of the fresh young faces just isn't doing their due diligence.

And... Next axe to grind. This one transitions into the review.

There are a lot of people ranting about how they would have preferred not to see the monster, that they were disappointed by the reveal. Granted that the monster looks mighty CG-y. But those people are in denial about what the movie actually is. It's a freakin' monster movie. Even "Alien," a movie that's mostly about "The Haunting"-style insinuation and spookiness, shows the freakin' alien. And a lot. And in close-ups. And in full light. There's a way these movies work -- you see a tail, you see a foot, you see the darned monster. While "Cloverfield" is intended as a heavy-handed 9/11 allegory, it's mostly about a giant critter terrorizing New York City. The desire to keep the monster permanently hidden is rooted in some critical desire for "Cloverfield" to be a better movie than it is, for "Cloverfield" to subvert, undermine and play tricks with the monster movie genre. The problem there? "Cloverfield" doesn't think it's better than it is.

After a little time spent establishing the characters -- cute 20-somethings with nebulous careers in Manhattan -- the movie just goes into monster-overdrive. The entire movie is shaky, hand-held jitters, but I think the compositional choices in "Cloverfield" are more thoughtful than in "Blair Witch" insofar as I only occasionally felt like I was confusing "motional sickness" with "actually being uncomfortable with the action on screen." It's still more "disturbing" than "scary" (dunno why everything's in "quotes") and much of that "disturbing" sensibility comes from the grammar-of-terror that we learned from 9/11, the billowing smoke pouring down the Manhattan streets, the teetering Big Apple buildings, the people staggering around covered in soot and ash. It doesn't over-exploit 9/11 and I may have wanted it to do more of that, to spend more time dealing with characters trying to fathom the unfathomable. The "things popping out of the dark" scares just kept reminding me of other, scarier movies like "The Descent" or "The Host."

As you would expect from a cast of "unknowns" (little joke there), the acting isn't exactly RSC-caliber, though several friends have called it awful, which I disagree with. Within the reach of what they were asked do to, I thought Caplan was very good (with her huge eyes, she's like a silent film waif) and Stahl-David was fine as well and I think any lapses by Yustman or Vogel or Lucas were based on what the director and dialogue asked them to do. Drew Goddard, who wrote the script, has written some amazingly clever episodes of "Buffy," "Angel" and "Lost," but he doesn't go for self-referential fun here and the occasional moments of pop culture glibness fall flat.

I understand that the movie is about a giant critter run amuck in Manhattan, so logic can't really be a point of issue, but some things were tough to swallow. The explanation for why the cameraman remains so carefully attuned to his cinematic project becomes more and more ridiculous as the stakes escalate and the idea that his friends and various military types keep tolerating his seemed weird. Also, even in the confines of the narrative, the rescue mission that the core characters undertake becomes less and less plausible every step of the way.

Even at 84 minutes, "Cloverfield" is padded and I wonder if a more "World War Z" tactic of cobbling together footage from a number of different groups of survivors might have made for a better movie. I'm curious how the residents of The Village or Spanish Harlem faced this event and we save countless characters filming either with cameras or cell phones and I think a more diverse assortment of found footage could have enhanced the storytelling and the momentum. Maybe with a bit of additional length, "Cloverfield" might have proved to be the clue-filed "Lost"-style film that a lot of Abrams-ites seem to have been hoping for. As it stands now, they're forced to read an awful lot into very little.

Oh and stick around for the closing credits. Not for the ending audio transmission, which didn't enthrall me at all. Michael Giacchino's "Roar!" overture, the only score in the movie, is like the greatest '70s Disaster Movie/ '60s Monster Movie pastiche ever.

That's all I've got for now, kids...

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