Quoth the Screaming Skull: “Nevermore”

And one need not be derivative to tell a classic story

Ashley Thorpe’s horror short, The Screaming Skull, aired Friday night at the Salt Lake Film Festival. Part of Thorpe’s “Penny Dreadful Shorts” series, in which he retells classic British folk-horror tales, this film is ten minutes of incredibly challenging movie-watching that ultimately doesn’t quite pay off.

Based on a folk tale popularized in a turn-of-the-20th-century short story, Skull is shot digitally and edited into stop-motion animation with a heavily saturated look. The sound effects are intentionally harsh and omnipresent, and the technical elements combine to generate an astoundingly deep sense of dread. If that were the extent of its intent, I’d call it a rousing success. Sadly, there is a narrative peeking its way around the corners of the technical abstraction, and it’s a pretty dumb one.

It’s easy to call a folk tale derivative, because by definition, folk tales have been told enough to have wormed their way into the collective understanding. Even with that caveat, the story of an object (in this case, a skull) of which a character can’t rid himself, no matter how hard he tries, has been told a thousand times. Nor is it novel to associate the returning object with the haunting memories of war and family tragedy. If Thorpe thinks he’s the first person to create a short work in which a character is haunted by an idea at the fringe of his consciousness that seems to grow stronger the more he tries to push it aside, I believe a Mr. Edgar Allen Poe would have something to say about that.

Still, this short is technically interesting, and if you’re into feeling really uncomfortable for ten minutes, you should check it out. Watch the trailer below or download the short in its entirety from Carrion Films.

45365 is a Midwestern Fantasia

45365, a critically acclaimed documentary by Bill and Turner Ross, is currently tearing up the festival circuit. A meandering tone poem lovingly addressed to Ross Brothers’ Ohio hometown, Sydney, the film won best documentary at SXSW and the Truer than Fiction award at the Spirits, among other impressive accolades. 45365 made a quick stop at the Salt Lake City Film Festival on Friday night and I had the pleasure of checking it out (paired with the previously reviewed Out of a Forest).

“45365” is, of course, the postal code of Sydney, Ohio, tbe small town through which the audience is ushered in the so-titled film. The camera takes us from life to life, like a hummingbird, stopping lightly to drink from a character before moving effortlessly to the next subject. The audience isn’t permitted to get very far beneath the surface of any of the film’s subjects, and I’m not sure if that’s a strength or a weakness. On one hand, some of these people are fascinating and endearing, and appear to deserve more than a cursory glimpse. On the other hand, the star of this movie is the town as a whole. The Ross Brothers want us to see it as a unified organism, a complex machine with interesting, though largely interchangeable parts.

One particularly handsome resident of Sydney, Ohio

The camera work in 45365 is gorgeous. Shot in high-definition, and painstakingly framed, most of the shots are highly evocative and moving, linked and juxtaposed together into something approaching coherence. This film is extraordinarily successful when it remains in the visual realm–like a sort of microcosmic Baraka—and doesn’t intrude too deeply into the lives of the people it portrays. One particular sequence in which a frantic, Friday night football scene cuts quickly to a shot of the same field, now silent and snow-covered, communicated mood and idea with an efficiency that simply can’t be translated into the spoken or written word.

The film struggles, however, when it starts to flirt with narrative intent, examining elements of conflict in its subjects’ lives with a startling shallowness. Really, the “stories” the movie tells are either boring (a local judge runs for re-election), inconsequential (a teenager deals with typical teenage relationship problems), or dangerously close to exploitative (various family spats and legal woes of the lower-class). The result is a movie that clocks in at only 90 minutes, but feels quite a bit longer, and could easily stand to shed ten or fifteen of its least successful minutes.

Despite its weaknesses, I liked 45365. In fact, I’m probably overstating my criticisms. As a whole, 45365 is a lovingly-shot homage to the communities that molded and shaped who we all have become. As a debut, it shows startling promise, and I can’t wait to see what part of the world the Ross Brothers decide to show me next.

Out of a Forest

I went last night to the Salt Lake City Film Festival. Turnout was weak and the festival organization seemed haphazard at best, but the films featured were impressive–a real testament to Salt Lake’s burgeoning film culture. The first film we were treated to was a Danish short by Tobias Gundorff Boesen called Out of a Forest. It’s a moody, stop-motion animated piece, set to “Slow Show,” by The National. The animation is gorgeous, and the song is one of my favorites. The narrative structure, however, seemed less than fully realized, more like a clever joke than a true story. That said, the visuals are more than enough to carry the five-minute film, and Out of a Forest is, if not an excellent movie, a pretty damn good music video.

Splice Is Ephed Up

Do not see it, unless you’ve always wondered what it would be like to see a bird-man sexing with Billy Corgan circa Ava Adore.

That is all. I’ll write more when I’ve had time to rediscover some shred of moral humanity in the universe.

[Might this be the beginning of another glorious era of WeWatchyness? It just might!]

The No Longer Unwritten Rules of Social Movie-Watching

Friday afternoon, I found myself at a friend’s house, re-watching Coraline. The first time I saw it, I’d gone to the movies with my parents and little brother. Cringing, I’d accepted the 3-D glasses, knowing I was in for a slightly painful experience. I’ve never been a fan of 3-D technology (it never seems to work quite right–maybe it’s my astigmatism), and I knew that having lost a contact lens in the car on the way to the theater couldn’t help. I liked the movie: the animation, sound, and editing added up to a dark, imaginative atmosphere, and the story-telling was clever, conflict-rich, and–a true triumph for anything related to the horror genre–not derivative in the least. Sadly, I spent the whole movie alternating between wearing glasses that made me dizzy and watching a blurry screen with one eye closed.  Being, in my estimation, a movie that relies heavily on the viewer’s sense of atmosphere, I’d been looking forward to watching “Coraline” on DVD, to give it a chance to really shine in the absence of my own myopic crises.

I wasn’t disappointed. The artwork spoke much more subtly and interestingly, though there were a few annoying shots which were obviously designed only to show off the 3-D imaging (needles poking straight at the screen, items plunging directly at the “lens,” etc.). I even bumped the movie up two spots to #5 for the year. Still, I’m not sure I’ve had a real chance to grasp the full feeling the movie inspires, not because of visual barriers, but because of a different, though equally sinister interloper: my friend’s new roommate.

This girl (we’ll call her “Joann,” because that’s her name) is a fine person, I’m sure. In our few opportunities to interact in the weeks since she moved in, I’ve found no reasons to dislike her. She seems kind and generally fun to be around. After Friday, though, one other thing is clear. Joann has no understanding of the rules of movie-watching, nor any intuitive, empathetic ability to sense when she is causing others pain. As soon as the credits rolled and Joann left the room, the collective, relieved exhalation was audible, and that’s when I knew something had to be done, as much for Joann’s sake as for ours.

So, Joann, if you’re reading this, know that I say these things out of love, both love for movies and for humanity in general. Here are a few rules that, if followed, will make your movie-watching persona match with the other lovable characteristics you seem to have mastered. Once and for all, here are the rules of social movie-watching, listed in ascending order of offense prevented. Master them, and I promise I will never again fantasize about smothering you with couch pillows.

1. Talking, if audible, must be more interesting than the obscured cinematic material, and must be interesting to all affected parties.

There are those who would completely outlaw talking during movies. These people should watch movies alone. Still, few things have as high a capacity for annoyance as superfluous movie-talking. How do you know what should be said and what should be stifled? It’s mostly an intuitive filter, but the above rule works 99% of the time. Here are a few additional guidelines:

ALWAYS ACCEPTABLE:

• Emergency notifications: “Joe–I just remembered that I’m supposed to tell you that your mom’s dead.”
• Making fun of Sarah Jessica Parker, whether or not she is currently on screen.

NEVER ACCEPTABLE:

• Pointless, bland commentaries (i.e. “This movie sucks.” or “This movie is weird.”), especially if negative or repeated.
• One-on-one conversations audible to others. Text each other, if you must.

CONTEXT DEPENDENT:

• Jokes are acceptable, as long as they are hilarious, brief (preferably one-liners), and movie-related. Anything else had better be really funny. Always acceptable: “That’s what she said.”
• Sharing your trivial knowledge with others (i.e. “that camera angle is obviously an homage to John Huston”) is allowed, as long as everyone else is at least as big a douche as you are.

2. Questions and other excessive interruptions must be important enough to warrant the use of your DVD player’s “pause” function. If interrupting is absolutely necessary, use that button.

Pausing a movie is annoying, but it is much less annoying than trying to field questions and pay attention to a movie at the same time. This also helps filter out the dumb questions. Most people know better than to pause “Fargo” to ask “Is that the guy from Lost?”

PAUSE-WORTHY QUESTIONS:

• “What kind of pizza should I order?”
• “What other movie is she/he in?” (provided that the actor is sufficiently obscure and trying to figure it out is causing you physical pain)
• “What did he/she say?” (provided that the line seems essential to understanding the movie and it comes at a highly pausable moment, like the end of a non-climactic scene)
• “Wait, what the hell just happened?” (provided that you preface the question by first acknowledging that you’re a moron)

NOT PAUSE-WORTHY:

• “How was your day?”
• Any plot-related questions in the first half-hour. This is my personal pet-peeve. A movie will start in media res, and the second the main characters appear, someone will ask, “Wait, are they married or something?” or “What’s in that bag?” I think we can all rest assured that the director will find it necessary to eventually let us know whether the main characters are married or not. If you don’t know what’s in the bag, odds are no one does, and if it matters, we’ll probably all find out together. Exercise patience and let the filmmaker give you information when she wants you to have it.

3. Absolutely no interruptions during any possibly climactic moment.

If your phone rings during a movie, you have three options. To answer and have a conversation, loudly so as to be heard above the sound of the movie, is not one of them. Option #1 (answering it and hanging up quickly with a “watching a movie–I’ll call you back”) is no longer available during a high-tension moment. The pause button is also off-limits in these situations. The remaining two options are: silence it and don’t answer it; or. silence it, leave the room, answer it, have your conversation, come back, take your seat, and try to catch up without asking any questions.

Some people seem to struggle to identify climaxes in story-structure. These people, if they insist on watching movies, probably don’t get much out of it anyway, and should leave the room anytime their phones ring. They are also probably poor lovers.

4. Do not give voice to your inner detective.

People react differently to suspense or mystery. Many people feel a strong compulsion to solve the mystery before the answer is revealed–Encyclopedia Brown style. That’s cool, and although I prefer to take things as they come, I understand why someone might feel this way. The problem arises when your hypotheses and astute mental workings start escaping through your mouth. Before you decide to vocally guess whodunnit or how the plot’s going to twist, let’s use a little logic to examine the possible consequences.

– When you make this sort of guess you are either (A) wrong or (B) right.

A) If you’re wrong, you look stupid.

B) If you’re right, everyone hates you for ruining the movie.

I don’t care if you’re Hercule Poirot. There’s no way around these two outcomes. So the next time you think the main character’s actually a ghost or his friend is just inside his head, keep it to yourself.

5. If you are not an originally-invited member of the movie party, feel free to join us. Just don’t assume you have any rights.

This includes your right to complain, your snacking rights, and your license to pause.

That’s all I can think of now. Anyone have any rules to add/remove/modify? Sound off in the comments. We also need to come up with some suitable, compassionate, yet sufficiently crippling, punishment for violations. Maybe something involving sofa pillows?

UPDATE: I’m watching State of Play with my family, and it’s helped make it clear that these rules (especially #3) don’t really apply when you’re watching a sucky movie. There is nothing wrong with interrupting this movie’s “climax” to point out that you liked this movie better the first time they made it, in 1993, when Russell Crowe was still black.

“I think this might just be my masterpiece.”

Lt. Aldo Raine and his branding iron.

Anyone who’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds knows where this post’s title comes from. I don’t think this is giving anything away, but SPOILER ALERT or whatever the hell you’re supposed to say. Those eight words up there are the last bad-ass words in the whole bad-ass movie, spoken by Brad Pitt’s bad-ass character, Lieutenant Aldo Raines, after doing something that could probably only be adequately described as really bad-ass.

But here’s the kicker: when I heard those eight words, I knew instantly they were Tarantino’s message to both his fans and his detractors. I knew it as clearly as if he’d swapped out the reel to a shot of just his face, cackling as the entire film industry burned down around him. “Like it or not,” he seems to say, “if you love movies–I mean if you really love movies–you have no choice but to come begging to me. Because, when it comes to sheer movie magic, I’ve got a motherf–king corner on the motherf–king market.”

I know. I’m probably overstating my case here. It’s not really fair to put those kinds of words in Tarantino’s mouth. Even by his standards, that’s pretty arrogant stuff, especially when it’s derived from one line from one character at the end of one movie.  But you see, that’s exactly it! It’s not just that one line–it’s every blessed second. Basterds absolutely bleeds superiority, and I don’t mean a sense of superiority–I mean the real thing. In terms of ambition, scope, and pure, pound-for-pound cajones, it’s just heads and tails above almost everything else being made today.

It starts in the opening chapter, which could have been, and as Tarantino admits, pretty much was, ripped straight out of the best of Sergio Leone–a metaphysical gunfight between a fast-drawing, corrupt sheriff and an overmatched farmhand. The scene just drips tension. Christoph Waltz, playing the SS “Jew-Hunter” sent to France to eradicate the remnant Jews, is blistering, and Denis Menochet doesn’t miss a beat as the heartbreakingly human object of Waltz’s interrogation. Menochet isn’t on screen for more than fifteen minutes or so, but his brief performance, like Viola Davis’s in Doubt and Michael Shannon’s in Revolutionary Road, will haunt you.

Basterds doesn’t let up. We meet Lt. Aldo Raines and his crew of Nazi-brutalizing, American jews, and we’re simultaneously delighted and disgusted by the way they mow down “Natzis.” Although Tarantino avoids even glancing at the sweeping battlefront vistas we’ve grown to expect from movies about the second World War, he certainly isn’t a wallflower. He plunges straight into the tension of the occupation and the psycho-political heart of the conflict, seemingly not even hesitating to blast through barriers of history–what Pi Patel might have called, “dry, yeastless factuality.” It’s obvious Tarantino’s saying something about the strength of story and film, and he does so in a way that doesn’t let you ignore it, even if it means you hate it.

And it’s certainly conceivable that one could hate it. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination.  The “basterds” at times, seem almost an afterthought, as Tarantino delves deeper into other stories. I can easuly imagine someone taking umbrage at Tarantino’s revisionism. Hitler is a figure that commands powerful emotions, and to play around with the truth of who he was and how he died is a dangerous plan. Really, I don’t blame anyone for completely dismissing this movie. The only inappropriate reaction to it is ambivalence. Tarantino doesn’t leave us the option. It’s either treasure, or it’s trash.

In Inglorious Basterds, Lt. Aldo Raines goes about his mission without the slightest twinge of misgiving or remorse. Similarly, Tarantino is a filmmaker on a mission, a mission to take us places we’ve never been but, at least in his view, we desperately need to go. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that QT views himself as a sort of Aldo Raines–a plodding, but focused outsider, with both the delicacy and the punch of a prizefighter, storming the barricades of our occupied imaginations and carving his initials in all of us. Perhaps the genius of IB is actually that, whether or not Tarantino actually succeeds in any of this is moot. In the end, it doesn’t matter if it works. because deep down, we all desperately wish it would.

Ponyo — You Know, for Kids?

So my cousin and I went to see Ponyo earlier this week at the local multiplex. Before the movie started, we were treated to a pair of portentous trailers.

First up: Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

Pretty amazing, huh? As far as trailers go, they don’t get much better than this. The visuals are beautiful and the music is great (Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,”). I give it a solid A-.

Next up: Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Another good one with some genuinely funny lines. I love the stop-motion, and the voice talent is an embarrassment of riches. B+

All in all, there’s a lot to be excited about in these two movies:

1. Two of my favorite childhood books are being brought to the big screen.

2. In the wake of this tragedy/abomination/rape of childhood joy, it helps to know that these stories are in the hands of imaginative directors with great track records.

3. Both directors co-wrote their screenplays with upper-echelon co-writers. Anderson teamed up with his former collaborator, Noah Baumbach, who also happens to have written the best screenplay of the 21st century. Jonze wrote the WtWTA script with help from one of my favorite novelists, Dave Eggers, of McSweeney’s fame. Eggers has also written a companion novel to the film, which seems to have departed significantly (and probably necessarily) from the rather simplistic plot of Sendak’s book. An excerpt was published in The New Yorker, and they’ve made it available online. Check it out. I did, and I was pleased.

4. The sheer amount of acting and voice talent is dizzying: Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Bill Murray, James Gandolfini, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener, Brian Cox, chef Mario Batali, and and former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. Whew.

5. Cocker’s also written a few songs for the FMF soundtrack. He released a solo album this year, “Further Complications,” that I have to recommend. The song, “Leftovers” is about an old man wooing a younger woman at a museum of paleontology, and it’s my favorite song of the year so far.

The score for WtWTA is being produced by none other than the incomparable Karen O. of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, with help from members of The Raconteurs, Queens of the Stone Age, and Deerhunter.

Add it all up and you have two upcoming releases that boast maximum appeal to me, and every other semi-hipster, 20-something moviegoer on the planet. The indie kids wouldn’t line up any faster if Conor Oberst was fellating himself while riding a retro-bike.

I’m sure I’ll see both movies on opening night, and I’m sure I’ll love them both.

Still, I have misgivings.

On one level, I’m totally excited to see credible directors deeming children worthy of their attention, and there are few stories as deserving of a renaissance as these two. But, on another level, I have to ask myself whom these movies are actually targeting, and what that means about these movies and the industry as a whole.

I seem to be in the minority on this. The vast majority of reactions I’ve seen to these movies has been overwhelmingly positive, expressing pleasure in the maturation of the children’s film industry. As Kyle Buchanan asks on Movieline,

Are we seeing a resurgence of children’s films that don’t feel the need to talk down to their audience (and don’t feel the best way to lure parents is with increasingly dated pop cultural references)?

Maybe so. It is nice to see that we’ve moved on from the days when “Shrek” seemed like the pinnacle of the juvenile cinema. Still, I have to ask a question in response: Before we worry about how these movies address their audience, do we (or they for that matter) even know which audience that is?

Now, I’m not saying there’s no way for a movie to appeal to both adults and children. I am saying that there are times when an artist has to make decisions to satisfy his intended audience at the expense of alienating another demographic. Sure, the greatest works are probably among the most inclusive, but in this case—films seemingly intended for children—a completely inclusive approach might not be the best.

The issue at hand might be fundamentally an economic one. It’s no secret that kids movies make bank. In 2008, none of the ten highest grossing films were rated R, and four of them were animated children’s movies. So, it makes sense for the industry to move in that direction. The catch? Kids don’t buy movie tickets—their parents do. A balancing act is required—parents must be wooed and children must be satisfied. One balance-method is the Shrek approach—shifting back and forth from one audience to the next, alternatively pandering in different generational directions. The result, in my opinion, usually seems inorganic and forced. Another option is the WtWTA model: make movies for adults, but make them imaginative and innocuous enough that they’ll take their kids. Is it an improvement? Sure. Is it the best possible direction for juvenile cinema? Maybe not.

This didn’t seem as obvious to me until after I’d finished “Ponyo”.

Hayao Miyazaki earned himself a lifelong pass to my good graces a long time ago. Not all his movies have been masterpieces, but they’re all good, and his best are more inventive and charming than really anything else. Spirited Away is my fourth favorite movie of all-time, and My Neighbor Totoro could be ranked almost as high. Both movies are engaging mixtures of Japanese folklore, subtly brilliant animation, and imagination in spades, and both are intended primarily for children. I emphasize “primarily,” because Miyazaki’s movies for children, especially Spirited Away, have typically featured heavy, symbolic undertones, which most young viewers would not be expected to observe or process. Don’t get me wrong—the symbolism was never heavy-handed, and I think, for the most part, children were always able to pick up on the most important themes.

Ponyo was different, and though not as wholly impressive as Miyazaki’s best works, it perhaps says more about his unique talents than any movie he has made. There is not a thing in Ponyo that I don’t think the average child could understand. That isn’t to say it’s simple. As always, Miyazaki refuses to fall into the Disney trap of arbitrarily classifying characters into rigid categories of heroes and villains. His characters are acting under complex, often contradictory motivations, making them seem highly realistic, despite the surreal animation. Conflict and suspense arise as characters are tried and tested, not by uncaring forces of evil that must be vanquished, but by the limits of their own passions and fears, and the great, fundamental neutrality of the universe. Likewise, Miyazaki gives his audience more credit than most directors would, refusing to spell things out any more than necessary. The result is a movie that treasures the inexplicability of magic, which Miyazaki seems to believe children intuit on a gut level. I think he’s right.

There’s no darkness in Ponyo—no room for ironic detachment. If you are willing to do your best to part the neurotic clouds of adulthood and watch it through the eyes of the child you once were (and still are, if you want to get all Zen about it), you will be entertained, taught, and ultimately pleased. Ponyo is proof that the best way to make movies for children is to trust and understand them. Kids will love these movies, because they will speak children’s language fluently; parents will love them for teaching and strengthening the children in their arms and the children in their hearts.

<single tear>

Movie Limbo

An interesting phenomenon of the moviegoer lifestyle is the half-watched movie. When you dedicate yourself to movie-watching, you quickly fill up your chunks of time large enough for movie completion. If you’re employed, active, or social, you rarely even have two such opportunities in a single day. But one movie a day is plenty, isn’t it? The problem: we were all born sometime after movies started being made. Even if we manage to keep up with notable current releases (at least two or three a week), there’s a seemingly unending canon of movies which, when left unseen, taunt the self-aware “movie buff” with his or her own glaring, consequential ignorance.

We all have that one movie–maybe “The Third Man” or “Seven Samurai” or “Once Upon a Time in the West”–that people talk about as if everyone’s seen it. Because, of course, everyone should have seen it. (Mine’s “Schindler’s List”.) Still, you haven’t, and every time that it’s mentioned, you recoil back in pained recognition of your own conversational irrelevance. Sometimes, we know enough to stay afloat: “I actually liked ‘The Magnificent Seven’ better…” or “The shot where Orson Welles’s face is illuminated in the alleyway has stuck in my mind ever since…” But even then, the emptiness of those unsupportable comments eats at our insides like acid.

It’s at this point where one movie a day doesn’t cut it. There are movies to be seen, dammit, and we’re each only given so many days. To satisfy our fix, we get creative.

“I can watch the opening scene of ‘Rear Window’ while I’m brushing my teeth, and if I put it on my iPod,and extend lunch by a few minutes, I can almost finish it.”

“I’ll TiVo “Key Largo” on TCM tonight, then I can watch half of it today after work and the rest Saturday morning before traffic school.”

“I’ll play “12 Angry Men” on the big-screen while I finish this blog post–it’s almost all dialogue, anyway. Hell, if I finish before the movie’s over, I can play “Birth of a Nation” on my computer, because it’s silent. I am one brilliant sonofabitch.”

The result? An endless list of half-watched movies, filling our restless minds with their unresolved conflicts, aborted plot-lines, and purgatoried characters. I know F. Murray Abraham kills Mozart, but I don’t know how. I thought “Full Metal Jacket” was a good movie for six whole weeks, before I finally got around to watching the second act. I watched half of “Lawrence of Arabia” four months ago, and now it’s lingering stalely in my DVR queue. I can’t delete it, because I haven’t finished it, as I can’t remember what happened in the first half and I wouldn’t know what was going on. But I do remember that I didn’t like the first half enough to spend two hours watching it again. It is a complicated existence that I endure.

And so we all move forward, haunted by not just the ghosts of the films we’ve been meaning to watch, but also by stumpy-limbed, deformed, fetal creatures–those characters conceived and ripped from the womb of active memory before reaching full development. Neither saved nor damned, these unchristened monstrosities follow us around, pool around our ankles, and tug at our shirt-sleeves. But no matter how we try to free them from their ignoble, unfulfilled state, we’ll never get to them all. Because, alas, there are so many. And I, my friend, am but one man.

Video: Elliot Smith, Oscars 1997

I  mentioned this in my live blog last night, but for some reason I thought he played it alone, in front of a red curtain. Instead, the background’s blue-black, and he’s accompanied by a full orchestra.

Oscars Live Blog – Part 5

• Directing: Danny Boyle. 15/21. Is it really possible that everybody that did anything for Slumdog did it better than anyone else for any other movie? That, my friends, is the magic of marketing.
• I’m starting to get nervous about the big awards, and I don’t really know why. I really hope Mickey Rourke wins. I really want to hear his speech. Today on the red carpet, he said he had planned to bring Loki, his dog he thanked at the Golden Globes, as his date, but she died last week. He even had a little tuxedo made for her. Sad stuff. He’d better win.
• Anne Hathaway is so pretty. Kate Winslet, too. I think I need to date a celebrity.Sophia Loren even works. She has to be the sexiest 120 year-old person alive.
• Kate wins (16/22). It’s nice to see someone that seems so un-ironically happy to be honored. If I were dating her, I’d give her a shampoo bottle shaped like an Oscar. And that is why I should be dating a celebrity.
• Here’s the big one, as far as I’m concerned. It’s going to come down to who introduces who. Sean Penn got Robert De Niro… and Mickey Rourke gets… Ben Kingsley. Hmm… close one. It’s Sean Penn, and I can’t argue. “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” Classic line. And you have to love the shout out to Mickey Rourke. I wish I was Mickey Rourke’s brother.
• And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to… Not Benjamin Button! It’s a victory for Quality and for all Americans! The academy got it right this year. Slumdog Millionaire is a beautiful movie. Now they’re trying to get everyone up on stage at once. Someone had better restrain Angelina. Having all those little brown kids up there has to be like porn for her.

And a few final notes to sum up the night:

• I finished up at 17/24. Not bad, I’d say. I should have picked Sean Penn–I knew he was going to win. All in all, a pretty predictable night. Slumdog cleaned up. Benjamin Button won a few visual awards, but nothing of any substance.
• The show was good–one of the better ones I can remember. It was restrained, subtle, and heartfelt. Hugh Jackman acquitted himself somewhat by not being too often on stage.
• A good night to be a gay Indian. A bad night to be Mormon nun who ages in reverse… or Bill Maher.