Two critics throw electronic popcorn at that annual parody of parity, the Oscars.
***image1***
On Sunday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will gather to honor not only great filmmaking but also politically correct filmmaking, establishment filmmaking, expensive filmmaking and, very likely, some really awful filmmaking. Long-distance guest Jon Frosch and the Screener dish about the inclusions, the omissions, the shoo-ins, the long shots and the hits and misses on this year's shortlist of nominees.
Jennifer Lowe:
First of all, Jon, thanks for agreeing to do this-it's no fun to grouse about the Oscars by myself, with no one to appreciate my devastatingly witty bons mots (or laugh politely and change the subject). Let's start with a notoriously hard-to-call category, also the one Jon Stewart will lead off with Sunday night: Who do you like for Best Supporting Actress?
Jon Frosch:
If we could swap Frances McDormand's Marge-Gunderson-in-a-wheelchair for Maggie Gyllenhaal's deliriously mischievous turn in
Happy Endings
-or Catherine Keener's underwritten
Capote
sidekick for Scarlett Johansson's electric femme fatale in
Match Point
-I'd be one happy critic. That said, I'll throw my support behind Michelle Williams, who handles some of
Brokeback Mountain
's most painful scenes (Alma's glimpse of her hubby making out with his "fishing buddy" was 2005's most shattering screen moment) with astonishing emotional conviction.
***image4***
JL:
I'm with you except for Ms. Keener; she brings such vivid no-nonsense gravitas to Harper Lee, providing ballast for Philip Seymour Hoffman's necessarily inflated theatrics. Though some of my favorites this year (
Hustle & Flow
's Taraji P Henson; an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton in
Broken Flowers
; Hope Davis full of peppery voyeurism in
The Matador
) didn't have sufficiently meaty parts to be nominated, what happened to Robin Wright Penn, so abruptly raw and exposed in
Nine Lives
? In lieu of her, I'll go for Amy Adams' exceedingly perky, exceedingly pregnant
Junebug
sister-in-law.
Moving on to Supporting Actor, I'd wager my press pass Paul Giamatti will win for
Cinderella Man
, though he's worked better elsewhere. Too bad no one noticed
Junebug
's Ben McKenzie as surly Johnny, suddenly scrabbling for a video cassette to record a meerkat documentary for his wife. Will Hurt makes quite an impression in his five minutes of Cronenberg screentime (as an amoral crime boss); and then there's George Clooney-more likely to win Best Director, or for his bulked-up CIA agent in
Syriana
?
JF:
Weight gains and boxing coaches aside, there are only two nominees here who I think have earned their spots. And much as I adore Matt Dillon as an eth(n)ically challenged cop-the most riveting thing in
Crash
-I'm pulling for Jake Gyllenhaal's indelible, achingly tender performance as the more effusive of
Brokeback
's doomed lovers. Why isn't he in the Best Actor category (a worthy replacement for Joaquin Phoenix, fine but unexceptional as Johnny Cash) alongside cowboy paramour Heath Ledger?
***image3***
JL:
Speaking of whom, if the Academy doesn't realize that Ledger has done some of the best old-school, big-screen acting since Brando or Dean, I'll feel a level of queasiness equal to what I experienced when
Forrest Gump
won in 1994 (over
Pulp Fiction
and
Quiz Show
, no less). Ledger makes grittily physical choices that could easily become melodramatic, but again and again the untutored actor nails them. But holy statuette, what a lineup, with incredible range from all five: Seymour Hoffman reincarnating as
Capote
, Terrence Howard so honestly portraying the moral ambivalence of DJay and my favorite long shot, David Strathairn: elegant, bitter, idealistic after his own morose fashion and completely convincing as Edward R Murrow. But why no nod to Michael Pitt for his nearly wordless suicidal rock star in Gus Van Sant's
Last Days
, one of the few films I wanted to see more than once this year?
JF:
The category might have been even more stellar had the Academy picked up on Joseph Gordon-Levitt in
Mysterious Skin
or Jeff Daniels in
The Squid and the Whale
. And while Seymour Hoffman's portrait of the artist as a raging narcissist is a bravura performance, I'd rather join in your hosannahs for Ledger: Is it just me or does the young Aussie dig up the deepest, most lived-in and devastating piece of acting we've seen in the last several years? Growling every word as if it hurts, his wounded scowl occasionally softened by surges of warmth (watch him when Jack's car pulls up after four long years), Ledger creates a sublime study in clenched emotion.
I wish I were as excited about Best Actress (where in the
New World
is Q'Orianka Kilcher?), but there's only one nominee who does it for me: Felicity Huffman, extraordinary in an ordinary movie,
Transamerica
. The part of a pre-op trannie getting to know her junkie son could have been milked for cheap laughs or tears, but Huffman-a woman playing a man becoming a woman-comes up with a richly original and human creation: Bree is sharp, vulnerable and as prissy as a 19th century schoolmarm.
***image5***
JL:
Gordon-Levitt's jaw-dropping performance as insouciant hustler Neil left the actor's sitcom past behind with meteoritic maturity; and I fell in love with Daniels' egocentric failed novelist as well. But as for those leading ladies-what a bleak little chorus line. Keira's pretty and Charlize gutsily underwent fake facial contusions, but other actresses did more in cameos than they did for their feature roles; as for Dame Judi, she's more than had her hour on the stage. My dream vote would've gone to either
Me and You and Everyone We Know
's Miranda July (her character's performance-art flakiness isn't for everyone, but it so completely absorbs us into the film's bubblegum pomo fantasy) or Alaska/Quechua Native Kilcher's heroine, saying more with her hands and feet and clear-eyed gaze than most actresses put over in a hundred pages of blah-blah.
Jon, there's just a little space left to wrap up with Best Director, Screenplay and Motion Picture. I predict Spielberg will come in from behind and nab the first and last with
Munich
-though my heart's with
Brokeback
for Best Picture (not least because it's the only movie at which I cried all year). I'm also pulling for Clooney to take home Best Director with his silken, silvery period piece defending freedom of the press, and Stephen Gaghan to make off with a little gold baldie for the rat-a-tat celerity of
Syriana
.
JF:
Jen, I wish I knew how to quit
Brokeback Mountain
, but I can't! Seriously, though: This heartpoundingly beautiful epic nails love's essence-the sensual rush of its discovery, the agony of its denial, the debilitating sensations of loss and regret-more vividly than any film I remember. Ang Lee lulls us with gentleness only to take us down in the final act, offering that rare film that actually hurts inside of us long after we've left the theater.
Brokeback
lashers, stop hating: This is 2005's masterpiece, and I'm pulling for a sweep.
