When you don’t read this, the Oscars will have come and gone. You are probably wondering my predictions. I don’t know, maybe you’re wondering how silly putty picks crap up from comic books*. But I think BABEL will win while Scorsese gets his obligatory Best Director/Lifetime Achievement/Sorry We Haven’t Given You An Oscar Yet Best Living Director statue. The other awards are a shoo-in: DREAMGIRLS will sweep the supporting noms while Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren will take home the big awards. I have seen none of those actorial movies. Like everyone else who lives in the bubble outside the mainstream (not many girls there), I am upset that CHILDREN OF MEN did not receive some arbitrary major nominations that would have opened it to the wider audience it deserved.

Here are my latest thoughts:

THE DEPARTED, on second viewing, gets even stronger. Scorsese gives a perfect overdose of style to a story that is somewhere in between a SOPRANAS knockoff and the Irish version of GOODFELLAS. Marty is working with the best actors available and they’re all excellent. My first impression of Matt Damon was that he was a dull cipher for a character that needed to a lot of buried syndromes. This time, I was pretty impressed by the way Jason Bourne allowed Scorsese to turn his image upside-down: he’s an impotent lothario scumbag who just happens to be very, very smart. Mark Wahlberg wraps his talent around the best dialogue the movie has to offer, and its proof that he has not abandoned the talent that BOOGIE NIGHTS proved he had. Di Caprio is awesome – he’s in the midst of a Nicholson-esque string of great, diverse roles. The supporting cast, particular Alec Baldwin and Ray Winstone, are pitch-perfect.

This is the most acrid Scorsese, normally a life-affirming libertine, has ever been. He attacks, in no particular order: priests, city government, the current Elephant Administration ™, Chinese Democracy (of the non-Axl variety), ceremony, psychiatrists, cell phone culture, the inadequacy of prescription drugs, real estate, the nation’s ultra-patriotic post 9/11 love of firemen, KANGAROO JACK funnyfatman Anthony Anderson, City Pride, TV News Sophists, and funerals. This is the least effective part of THE DEPARTED (the man has never been very good, or needed to be, at messages), but it is still the most powerful piece of High Profile Cinema in the last few years.

THE ILLUSIONIST and THE PRESTIGE

Two magic movies in Fall ’06 and both featured the participation of legendary conjurer Ricky Jay (as a performer in PRESTIGE, a consultant in ILLUSIONIST). THE ILLUSIONIST was, apparently, the bigger hit, which was odd because THE PRESTIGE was the more conventionally entertaining. I liked both films kind of. They both suffered from high concept stories obsessed with making a connection between deception-based magic and deception-based storytelling. With its showy cinematic, THE ILLUSIONIST would seem to be the one making more of a moral about the ILLUSION of movies, but ultimately THE PRESTIGE spends more time in the “You Can’t Really Believe Everything You See” camp. THE ILLUSIONIST is popcorn camp passed off as high style (done very well), while THE PRESTIGE is a grand gesture about all kinds of contrived wizardry pieced together into a genre pic.

Though I liked both films kind of, I preferred THE PRESTIGE mainly because of Christian Bale’s crazy eyes, Michael Caine’s enduring watchability, David Bowie’s participation, Scarlett Johannson’s siren presence, and Hugh Jackman’s perfect mix of vulnerability and cocksure arrogance. Bale, in particular, is an actor who deserves more credit: I found him boring in BATMAN BEGINS, but it wasn’t his fault. Except for maybe fellow chap Clive Owen, he is the most inaccessible persona on the screen, and this makes him fascinating. He refuses to let us in, to show up on talk shows wearing jeans and a blazer and tell funny stories about his kids. He stares in the camera as though he can break the lens. When he laughs, it’s because he’s smarter than you. It’s hard to believe this is the doe-eyed expressive ragamuffin from EMPIRE OF THE SUN.

THE ILLUSIONIST features a tedious performance by Edward Norton, who has only been interesting in movies he could manipulate (like the wretched DOWN IN THE VALLEY). As the cop, Paul Giamatti is always interesting, but Norton sleepwalks through every scene he’s in. Since 25^TH HOUR, Ed has been in a downward spiral that might necessitate the dreaded “comeback.” But since he was never a major star to begin with, and never a pop-culture icon, audiences are likely to yawn when he does, unlike the Travolta/Carradine resurgence models.

Still, a double-bill of both films is more than passable entertainment.

I have been busier than the guy who cleans the toilets in Hell recently, so I have plenty of reasons not the see the hideous January/February releases like the recently released JIM CARREY HAS LONG HAIR AND AN EXPLICIT SEX SCENE AND BABBLES ABOUT NUMEROLOGY. I recently saw a preview that said

"WILD HOGS IS THE FIRST GREAT COMEDY OF THE YEAR! ALLEN, LAWRENCE, TRAVOLTA, AND MACY (why William H, why??!?!) ARE A DREAM TEAM."

Rhetorical question: would anyone arrest a serial killer of blurb artists-for-hire? Not-so-rhetorical conclusion: I think I’ll do it anyway.

Speaking of serial killers: One question about these dud-season releases, why was David Fincher’s ZODIAC dumped at the beginning of March? As I remember, the same thing happened with his mediocre PANIC ROOM. Fincher directed, by my vote, the best Serial Killer movie ever made, and one of the best movies of the last twenty years: SEVEN**. Now he’s back in his wheelhouse, working with a great cast (and, sadly, Jake Gyllenhaal), and making a stylish late-period piece ripped from the headlines. Could it be a bomb? Is Fincher a dead man walking? Has he both betrayed his iconoclastic roots that made him such a force of nature and ruined his chance to make big budget genre pics (of which his THE GAME is one of the best of recent memory)?

A long post, I realize. In case you’re one of the people who hasn't talked to me in the last four weeks, the best album since Arcade Fire’s FUNERAL is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s SOME LOUD THUNDER. I say this only so you can go buy it. I’ll post about it’s Television/Talking Heads-inspired awesomeness in a later post.

* - I ripped off this line from a movie you should see, KISS KISS BANG BANG

** - I absolutely refuse to type the actual title: SE7EN***

*** - I just did

THREE MOVIE REVIEWS

1) LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

LETTERS is Eastwood at his (paradoxically) most restrained and least subtle. For The Man With No Name But Two Oscars, that is saying an awful lot – but his latest progression of movies is following that trend: more restrained in terms of form and stylistics, and less subtle in terms of performance and nuance.

Still, LETTERS is a really good film, kind of brave at times in its insistence that the fanaticism of the Japanese was not their raison-de-etre. That the Japanese fit so neatly into the typically stoic-passionate vision quest of Eastwood’s films is a testament either to the Japanese or the filmmakers’ ability to make them something other than noble savages, Eastern voodoo archetypes, or kamikaze nutjobs.

Where the film lacks subtlety are in the typical scenes where serious looking members of the proletariat tell us the theme of the movie. There’s a very moving “We don’t know anything about the enemy” speech that is intended to be very moving. And, like PRIVATE RYAN, there’s an unnecessary framing device.

My take on Eastwood is this: He has made one masterpiece (UNFORGIVEN) and one awesome, archetypal, though mostly forgotten genre piece (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER). His third best film is LETTERS. The rest of his catalog (and it’s expansive, because he makes a movie a year) is hit or miss: from

Wildly overrated: MYSTIC RIVER, MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Curious Misfires That Are A Classic Mismatch of Director and Material: BREEZY, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART

Wildly Underrated: A PERFECT WORLD, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, BRONCO BILLY

Solid, but mostly forgotten, certainly not iconic, but very entertaining genre pictures: SPACE COWBOYS, THE EIGER SANCTION, FIREFOX, THE GAUNTLET, HEARTBREAK RIDGE, TRUE CRIME, ABSOLUTE POWER

There are those who are quick to celebrate some kind of Eastwoodian Renaissance with MYSTIC RIVER, and those people were quick to dismiss him after BLOOD WORK (you didn’t see it; I’m not surprised – it was his least seen movie since THE ROOKIE). But now Eastwood, Scorsese, and Speilberg have been entered in some kind of high-falutin’ “Best Director in the World” contest. I think the person who will be hurt most by this is Eastwood, who has the capability to move toward the arty and the overly serious as opposed to the genre pieces that generally better reflect his gifts and charms. (I'm still waiting to see FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS)

2) SCIENCE OF SLEEP

I complained that the otherwise stellar ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND was not funny where it should have been. Music Video wunderkind Michel Gondry directed it with the kind of solemnity usually reserved for Hallmark movies. Gondry’s gifts, I decided, were a quirky visual flourish that doesn’t draw attention to itself (whereas everything about SUNSHINE was designed to draw attention to its elaborate artificiality). But with SCIENCE OF SLEEP, he surprised me with his humor.

The film is endlessly inventive and funny. It has both a daffy exuberance and hipster’s lazy attitude towards finishing things. Gondry’s brilliant decision is in his refusal to distinguish between reality and dreams, and it allows the movie to fit outside and inside both worlds.

Gael Garcia Bernal pisses me off. He is obviously the kind of guy who can walk into any bar where I happen to be, and pick up the girl that I have deemed the best looking and the coolest. More than any actor under forty, the camera is in love with him, and he is comfortable in front of it. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the filmic equivalent of the “girl that I have deemed the best looking and the coolest.” She ranks a close second to Zooey Deschanel on my working list of “girls who wear sweaters too big for them that I dream about ”

Chuck Klosterman has a hypothetical situation involving a wizard that makes you that much better looking for every dollar you give him. This hypo is similar to my thoughts about the Velvet Underground and movies. If a movie includes a VU song, I will like it that much better. Needless to say, SCIENCE does.

3) BABEL

BABEL is a bleak, practically hopeless meditation on people who uncomfortable with the place they are. Like 21 GRAMS, it works on three levels: in this case, global, economic, and personal. Almost Nobody in BABEL really likes themselves all that much, and yet the film finds the weirdest sort of compassion for every one of them.

I wish I credit this to Alejandro Innaritu for some reason other than “artistry,” but I cannot. Innaritu is a plain old-fashioned cliché: an artist. He has no truck for the type of cohesive realism that modern directors feel hamstrung by and allow to hamper their resources for artistic and political expression. That said, BABEL doesn’t feel overly political – the implications are all the viewers. No one comments on the surroundings, and this has caused many to say it is uneven. I think it’s the reason for its greatness.

The performances are amazing, and one of the things Oscar got right was in nominating the Mexican and Japanese actresses whose names I can’t remember.

If Babel has a flaw, it’s that oft-mentioned lack of causality. But if you can escape that, and you should, it is one of the best films of the year.

BTW, If I were going to update my top ten list after my recent viewing experiences, it would look something like this (withe everything else dropping to honorable mention):

1) BRICK 2) CHILDREN OF MEN 3) UNITED 93 4) THE DEPARTED 5) BABEL 6) THE FOUNTAIN 7) MIAMI VICE 8) NEW YORK DOLL 9) TALLADEGA NIGHTS 10) LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame by Charles Bukowski

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.

I don't really know what to say about the life of Charles Bukowski, other than that he spent most of his life as a boorish drunk postman/barhopper with ridiculous poetic ambitions that were amazingly realized. There is not much redemption in his story. For most of his life, if his numerous autobiographical tomes are to be interpreted, he was an acne-ridden slob who could not hold down a job, a woman, or regular room and board. Then his poems became a success, he was an underground sensation, and he traveled the country to give drunken poetry readings and cryptic answers to 'Zine lapdogs. Anyone who wants to know more about the last sentence can see the recent documentary BORN INTO THIS, where Bukowski seems at once arrogant and befuddled by and about his ability to write poetry.

The average person does not know Charles Bukowski, and this is ironic because it is the average person he thinks he is writing about. But Bukowski's averages are grotesques: lonely, irresponsible loudmouths who manage to piss off every boss they ever worked for. It is the critics who find that Bukowski supremely represents the bridge and tunnel crowd.

Still, I've always found Bukowski to be a fascinating poet and novelist, ever since Ben and I attempted to adapt his last novel, PULP, into a screenplay. His HAM ON RYE is one of my favorite books. He writes about the underbelly from the underbelly, without any attempts at sympathy or objectivity. It is raw, unforced, and immediate - gutter poetry, I've heard it called, and that about gets it.

The latest attempt at a Bukowski movie, FACTOTUM, is hit or miss. In the 80s, critics fawned over the Bukowski adaptation BARFLY. Bukowski apparently hated it, and chronicled the experience in the superlative "novel" HOLLYWOOD. BARFLY starred Mickey Rourke as Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski, and stumbled around the whole movie talking like Snagglepuss. I found it to be an annoying performance in a dull movie. FACTOTUM stars Matt Dillon, an actor I've always liked, and while Dillon does not give into Rourke-esque indulgence, he is wrong for Chinaski. Chinaski is a pug-ugly, pudgy loser who could have only existed in 1940. Dillon is a former teen idol. Sadly, like Rourke, his movie star looks will always haunt him, because this is the role he seems to enjoy the most - depraved, wayward, and rough.

The biggest problem is the curious decision to the update the time. There are many adjectives that can be used to describe C.B., but "timeless" is not one of them. His novels are rooted in a period; Chinaski rejects a very particular, archaic set of values that made him an iconoclast at the time, but today would make him at home with many. In reading the novels, he is the antithesis of the so-called greatest generation - and thats what made him such a compelling literary figure: his refusal to buy into any of the party lines. Today, of course, one out of every three people you meet are the antithesis of the greatest generation.

Chinaski was Bukowski's warped, brilliant attempt at the picaresque tradition - where the rogue hero grows only through his misadventures. But he's also a naive in the tradition of Forrest Gump or Candide, whose apparently world-weariness is countered by his discomforting (often grotesque) childishness and need for companionship. Like those heroes, Chinaski succeeds with wit, not knowledge, and instinct rather than understanding. This character seems out of place in a setting that is so obviously modern. The job-bouncing Chinaski would not be able to rent five dollar rooms anywhere. In FACTOTUM, he is an anachronism who is never explained, and this makes the film curiously disjointed.

Still, there is much to admire about the movie, particularly in the passionate performance of Lili Taylor. The film captures out-of-work lowlifes in the same way that Bukowski did - without degrading or sentimentalizing them in a Damon Runyan gallery of toughs. It has the typical crude, hilarious, and cringe-inducing humor of the best Bukowski work. At its worst moments, it gave further proof that no filmmaker will ever be able to capture Bukowski, thus never exposing him to a wider audience. At its best, it reminded me of the brilliant closing losing lines of HAM ON RYE, perhaps my favorite ending of any novel. Chinaski, unemployed and penniless, covered in acne that is at once his badge and his scar, plays a primitive robot boxing game with a Mexican boy. The fighters fight; Chinaski loses. Bukowski writes:

"I put in another dime and blue trunks sprang to his feet. The kid started squeezing his one trigger and the right arm of red trunks pumped and pumped. I let blue trunks stand back for a while and contemplate. Then I nodded at the kid. I move blue trunks in, both arms flailing. I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn't know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important?
And another part of me answered, just because it is.
Then blue trunks dropped again, hard, making the same iron clanking sound. I looked at him laying on his back down there on the little green velvet mat.
Then I turned around and walked out."