WARNING: TOP-OF-THE-HEAP SPOILERS

In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” it took Daniel Day Lewis four words to get women into bed: “Take off your clothes.”

Piker. It often takes Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), the protagonist of “Shame,”  no words. He’ll just look at a pretty girl on the subway, suggest with his eyes, smolder a bit, wait for the tension to mount, and she’s ready. He’ll sidle up to his hyperactive boss, David (James Bade Dale of “The Pacific”), who’s trying to make the pretty one at the bar, say one or two words, and suddenly she’s casting him the kind of glances most men don’t receive in a lifetime.

Normally such a character would be wish fulfillment. Not here. Fassbender, impeccably groomed, is in almost every shot of “Shame” but it’s writer-director Steve McQueen’s movie. He sets the tone, which is moody, atmospheric, full of dread. Every day for Brandon is another day of desperately needing sex but desperately not needing the contact that goes with it. There’s something inside of him that can’t be fulfilled. In this, he’s like all of us, but his need is greater and the moments he’s satiated shorter. The title of this movie could be the title of McQueen’s first movie: “Hunger.”

“Shame” is more portrait than story. It’s a snapshot from a life. Brandon has a business-type, investment-type job in New York, which he apparently does well even though he’s rarely thinking about. He’s a sex addict so he’s always thinking about his next fix. In the toilet stall at work? In his bathroom at home? Via online pornography, magazines, DVDs? With Prostitute A, B, or both? With this girl at the bar or that girl on the subway? At that straight club? At that gay club?

There’s a cool exterior to Brandon, an unknowability and mystery that’s obviously appealing. Who is that man behind the scarf? But the cool exterior hides ... what? His sexual need and what else? A few books line the shelves of his high-rise condo, including, I was happy to see, Don DeLillo’s “Underworld”; but one can’t imagine him reading it. How could he sit still that long?

His careful routine, the veneer of respectability hiding his monstrous shame, is upset when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), shows up at his place. She’s a free spirit, a singer at posh bars, and later we hear her rendition of “New York, New York,” the triumphant ode to Manhattan that’s played after every Yankees victory; but she delivers it slow and sad, from the perspective of someone who isn’t A-number-1, top of the heap. It’s a beautiful moment in the movie, one of several moments Mulligan gives us. I still think of the way she bounces with delight on the subway platform after Brandon agrees to hear her sing. She wants to be part of his life—that’s her need—but it conflicts with his need. At one point, she alludes to their fucked-up childhood, and one wonders if there’s more there than the usual fuckedupness; if there wasn’t abuse of some kind. But we never get specifics. We get vapors.

She sleeps with his boss, his married boss, at Brandon’s place, and he can’t deal with it and goes running. She hangs too close to the tracks on the subway platform and he pulls her back. They’re both self-destructive but hers is sloppy and showy—there are scars on her wrists—and his is secretive and shameful and infecting every aspect of his life. She wants to pull him into the light but he reacts with anger. “I’m trying to help you,” she says. “How do you help?” he responds through clenched teeth. “You come here and you’re a weight on me.” After the movie, Patricia said he reminded her of me in this moment. That’s one thing I have in common with Brandon. We both feel easily trapped. We both live life in the exit row.

He makes a feint at respectability. He goes on a date with an attractive co-worker, Marianne (Nicole Beharie), and reacts to the dinner conversation as if it’s all new and amusing to him. A back and forth ... with words? He admits his longest relationship was just four months. He admits that that’s how he likes it. She doesn’t flee. Maybe, after the usual, first-date bullshit, this straightforwardness is refreshing. Maybe it’s the scarf and the Ewan McGregor smile. All those small charming teeth.

Was he always interested in Marianne as more than just another lay? Or did that idea only emerge when Sissy found him jacking off in the bathroom and found live sex girls on his home computer? After that, he tries to get rid of it all—the magazines, the DVDs, the computer itself—as if getting rid of the evidence of his need will get rid of the need. He wants to be clean again and he sees Marianne as the path to cleanliness. But when they finally fall into bed together he can’t get it up. For a moment we think this is his fate—to overdo it and then be unable to do it—but after she leaves we get a quick cut of him banging a prostitute in the same room, so that’s obviously not the problem. The problem is the cleanliness and the respectability. He can’t have it with any kind of meaning. He can only have it in a way that leaves him unfilled and seeking it again. It’s as if the disease is protecting itself from him. His disease needs to keep him hungry. It’s saying: You’re married to me.

“Shame” is a snapshot from a life because there’s no real resolution. There’s not even a program he enters. That would be too afterschool special. There’s just need and heartache and awful need again. Sissy tries to kill herself but she’s tried to kill herself before. Brandon binges on sex but no doubt he’s binged before. It leaves him exhausted and crying but the thing inside him won’t come out. Sexaholism used to be a punchline to me—who isn’t addicted to sex?—but Steve McQueen shows us the difference as well as the similarity. The difference is in volume and the similarity is in almost everything else. The similarity is in trying to get this thing out of us. The similarity is in the lack of resolution or resurrection. In the end, Brandon is back on the subway, and there’s that girl again, and now she’s ready; and the hunger is always ready.

I took these screenshots July 4th on the “In Contention” site, which is devoted to all things Oscar. I wanted to see how far-ranging their predictions were. Who was considered a front-runner back then? Who had the buzz? And whose buzz proved short-lived?.

Here:

From the photos alone you get a sense of the evanescence of buzz. “J. Edgar” as leading best picture contender? Spielberg touted for his direction of “War Horse”? Where does this buzz come from? Publicists? Why aren't we shooing this shit away? More: Why do we need to talk about anything we haven't seen? What's the point in it? Not to get too Yoda here but all of our lives we look away to the future, to the horizon. Never our minds on where we are. Hmm? What we are doing.

This is IC's tally:

• Best Picture: 7 of 9. They missed “The Help” and “Moneyball.” They thought “Ides of March,” “J. Edgar” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
• Best Directing: 3 of 5: Picking Eastwood and Spielberg, missing Malick and Allen.
• Best Actor: 3 of 5. Missing Bachir and Pitt. Was there really a time when Jeremy Irvine was touted as best actor?
• Best Actress: 2 of 5. No Viola, Rooney or Michelle. Back when people still thought highly of “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” Well, some people.
• Best Supporting Actor: 2 of 5: Missed Hilly, Nolte and Von Sydow for Broadbent, Brooks and P.S. Hoffman
• Best Supporting Actress: 0 for 5. Fun! Including two performances (Tomei and Watts) that barely left a mark.

In the acting categories alone, they were 7 for 20.

This is not to slam IC, which has good writing, even if the site itself has gone over to Hitfix; it's not to slam the work of the artists who didn't make the cut, since we can argue about that forever. (Charlize, honey, you wuz robbed!) It's just a reminder, I guess. I like thinking about what we once thought about. That's my Yoda problem. All my life I've looked back into the past. There's less money in it but greater clarity.

WARNING: EAT MY SPOILERS

In “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Katharine Hepburn does it to Virginia Christine. In “Mississippi Burning,” Gene Hackman does it to Brad Dourif. In “The Help,” it’s Allison Janney to Bryce Dallas Howard. They’re the somewhat-enlightened white people who berate the less-enlightened white people in movies about civil rights. They’re the white people who make the white people in the audience feel good about themselves.

Apparently Jim Zwerg wasn’t enough.

The Janney moment occurs near the end of “The Help” and it’s a wholly unnecessary scene in which Charlotte Phelan (Janney), mother of the film’s protagonist, Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), does a 180. For most of the movie, she’s had one goal: marry her daughter off. “Your eggs are dying,” she says early on. “Would it kill you to go on a date?” At the 11th hour, suddenly she’s OK with her daughter being the way she is and getting a job in New York and being a modern woman and all;  and she apologizes for the way she’s been for most of the movie and most of her life: cowardly and overly concerned aboout societal matters. And to make it up to her daughter, she berates the movie’s villainess, Hilly Holbrook (Howard), a classic “mean girl” from one of the most connected families in Jackson, Mississippi, in language that will end any connection between their families. “Get your raggedy ass off my porch!” she says.

We’re supposed to cheer. Some people probably did. The bad person has been told off, and Allison Janney, whom we loved on “West Wing,” is someone we can love again. And we get that nice mother-daughter feeling going.

Years ago, “In Living Color” did a spot-on satire on Hollywood movies about civil rights. It was mostly lampooning “Cry Freedom,” I think, and a bit of “Mississippi Burning,” both of which focus on well-meaning whites and the problems they encounter (losing jobs and homes, etc.) as they stand up to racism. The black folks around them are being beaten and killed, sure, but it’s the white folks we worry about because it’s the white folks we focus on. Black folks are non-entities: walk-ons in their own story.

“The Help” is an improvement on this kind of historical myopia since it actually gives half-time to its title characters. Okay, 45 percent.

It’s 1962 and Skeeter Phelan is returning from college to her hometown of Jackson, where she lands a job ghosting a household-advice column for The Jackson Journal. (Aside: The actor who plays the editor, Leslie Jordan, steals the scene; he’s so authentic I assumed he was a local.) Catch: Skeeter doesn’t know from household advice; she was raised by a beloved maid, Constantine (Cisely Tyson), who has mysteriously disappeared, and initially she has nowhere to turn. But eventually she relies upon the people who do know housework: the black maids who bus in from the outskirts, and raise the kids and cook the meals and clean the floors of the white folks in town. From this initial contact, she gets an idea for a book. What is it like to raise a child who then becomes your boss? What is it like to leave your own child to care for another? Her editor in New York, Elain Stein (Mary Steenburgen), who has suggestions of a “Sex and the Single Girl” lifestyle in her few moments on screen, is open to the idea, but doubts she’ll get any Southern black maid to trust her and talk. It’s the North reminding the South how the South lives.

Even so, one voice slowly emerges: Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), who works for Hilly’s friend, Elizabeth (Ahna O’Reilly), raising the little girl that Elizabeth can’t or won’t. You could call Aibileen the soul of Skeeter’s book just as she is the soul of the movie. Davis is able to portray a bone-deep sorrow few actors can. She has a dignity about her but it’s never the proud, Hollywood kind meant for oppressed minorities. In the roles I’ve seen her in—“Doubt,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” and this—her characters are often skittish and distracted, as if  they were thinking of other, sadder things. Most likely they are, since the movies are never wholly about them. The things she’s thinking about are the things Hollywood doesn’t portray: her life. But through Skeeter’s eyes, we do get a portion of that life.

If Skeeter is a progressive in racial matters, Skeeter’s childhood friend, Hilly, is the regressive. At a time when the civil rights movement is gaining strength, with marches in Albany and Birmingham and Washington D.C., she’s lobbying for a state law requiring separate bathrooms for black maids. “They carry different diseases than we do,” she says.

Hilly’s fears and prejudices lead to the ultimate in just desserts. When she fires her maid, Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), for using the family toilet on a rainy day, then talks trash about her so she can’t get other work, Minny returns with a peace offering: a chocolate pie. But it’s not a peace offering because it’s not wholly chocolate. Hilly, who didn’t want to put her ass where Minny put hers, winds up eating ... no nice way to say this ... Minny’s shit. Literally. Minny planned on keeping this fact a secret, but Hilly is so awful, and Minny so volatile, that they have the following exchange:

Minny: Eat my shit.
Hilly (shocked): Excuse me?
Minny: I said eat... my... shit.
Hilly (still shocked): Have you lost your mind?
Minny: No, ma’am but you is about to. Cause you just did.

One wonders to what extent a black maid could say “Eat my shit” to a white woman in early 1960s Mississippi, let alone make it literally come true, without losing more than an income. The movie suggests that Hilly is so embarrassed by the incident that she’ll do anything to keep it under wraps. But wouldn’t she want revenge? And if she couldn’t tell the truth, what’s to stop her from makin’ up a little ol’ fib? She’d hardly be the first Southern belle to do so.

(Aside I: When did Bryce Dallas Howard become the villainess de rigueur of Hollywood? Not only Hilly here but the worst girlfriend in the world, Rachael, in “50/50.” Who knew the daughter of Ron Howard, Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guy, had it in her?)

(Aside II: Does anyone else think of this movie as the battle of the Gwen Stacys? Howard and Stone, squaring off here, have both played Spider-Man's girlfriend: Howard in a bit part in “Spider-Man 3,” and Stone as the main squeeze in “The Amazing Spider-Man” this summer.)

(Aside III: OK, nerd hat off.)

Post-pie, Minny finds work on the outskirts of town with an ostracized white girl with a heart of gold. Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain) is from Sugar Ditch, Miss., and is viewed as white trash by the girls in town, particularly Hilly, who once dated Celia’s husband, Johnny (Mike Vogel). Basically Celia is too dumb to be racist, to know all of the things you are supposed to do or say, or not do or say, with the help, and this, combined with a childlike enthusiasm, makes her adorable. She’s the other good white girl in town, and Minny teaches her how to cook, clean, sass other women. Apparently she knew none of these things. One wonders what she was she doing for the first 20 years of her life.

Meanwhile, Yule Mae Davis (Aunjanue Ellis), Minny’s replacement in the Holbrook household, asks Hilly for a $75 loan so she and her husband can send both of their kids to college. OK ... Where to start with this? She asks Hilly for a loan? To send two kids to college? At a time when it took the National Guard to send James Meredith to the University of Mississippi? And she’s shocked when Hilly says no?

Later, while vacuuming, she finds Hilly’s engagement ring behind a couch, pockets it, pawns it, and is eventually arrested. This is the awful, unjust incident that sends all the other black maids in Jackson into the arms of Skeeter and into the pages of “The Help”: the fact that someone who stole something got arrested for it.

But never you mind. The book becomes a huge success, the maids get royalties, Skeeter gets a job in New York, and Hilly, awful Hilly, gets hers. Everyone—from Charlotte to Aibileen—tells her off. It’s a happy ending. How could it be otherwise? It’s now Mississippi 1964. What could possibly go wrong?

It's been a while since I voiced disagreement with the New York Times' resident movie-industry writers Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes but they had a line in their latest piece about the Academy Award nominations (“Nine Films Vie for Best Picture”) that stopped me cold:

“In a seeming disconnect, only one best actress nominee, Viola Davis of 'The Help,' appeared in a film nominated for best picture.”

Really? A seeming disconnect? The Academy is male dominated and tends to nominate movies that are male dominated. Best pictures have historically featured leading men, not leading women. Don't they know this? I wrote the following for MSNBC seven years ago:

In the first 15 years of the Academy (roughly 1928-43), the woman who won best actress appeared in that year’s best picture three times: Luise Rainier for “The Great Ziegfield” in 1936, Vivien Leigh for “Gone with the Wind” in 1939, and Greer Garson for “Mrs. Miniver” in 1942. ...

Did women’s stories suddenly seem silly and unimportant after D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge? Perhaps. Because the next time a best actress appeared in a best picture wasn’t until 1977: Diane Keaton for “Annie Hall.” During that same period, 15 best actors starred in best pictures, and to this day, best pictures tend to be testosterone-filled enterprises: “Braveheart” and “Gladiator” and the like. It’s the Academy’s way of telling women their stories don’t matter. I’m surprised there’s not a bigger outcry over this.

True, I'm discussing winners and Cieply and Barnes are discussing nominees; and true, in the previous two years, with best picture nominees swollen to 10, more of the films of best actress nominees wound up among the best picture nominees: three in 2010 (“Black Swan,” “The Kids Are Alright,” and “Winter's Bone”) and three in 2009 (“The Blind Side,” “An Education” and “Precious”).

But these are historic anomalies. The previous year, only one best actress nominee, Kate Winslet, had her film, “The Reader,” among the best picture nominees. In 2007? One again: Ellen Page for “Juno.” 2006? Helen Mirren in “The Queen.” 2005? Zilch. Nada. Bupkis.

It is a seeming disconnect that women's films are ignored in this manner. But Cieply and Barnes should know that it's been a seeming disconnect since around World War II.

Meryl Streep may look shocked, but she knows, as Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes apparently don't, that the films of best actress nominees tend not to garner nominations for best picture. Of the 14 films for which she's been nominated best actress, only one* has been nominated best picture.

*Answer in the comments field below.

The expansion of the best picture nominations from five to 10 in 2009 was all about box office. (See this chart.) Or it was all about fragmentation and Academy tastes not meshing with popular tastes. Or it was studios not distributing and/or promoting quality films. Or quality films no longer attempting popular appeal. Or serious filmgoers waiting for DVDs, lazy bastards. It can get pretty tricky, in a chicken-and-egg kind of way, when you attempt to break it all down.

Bottom line: While the nominees for best picture historically included a top-10 box office hit, and more often than not included the No. 1 movie of the year (see: 1967 to 1977), by the mid-2000s the nominees couldn't even crack the top 14. Between 2004 and 2008, the highest-grossing best picture nominee in terms of box office ranked as follows: 22nd, 22nd, 15th, 15th and 16th. Eww.

So in 2009 the Academy decided to double the best-picture nominees. How has this worked so far?

Well, its first year, the whole thing was probably unncessary, since “Avatar,” the highest-grossing movie of the year, the decade, and all-time in terms of both dometic and international box office, would've been nom'ed anyway. But “Avatar” did get nom'ed. As did “Up,” the No. 5 film, and “The Blind Side,” at No. 8. Three films in the top 10! That hadn't happened since 1997.

In 2010, the No. 1 movie, “Toy Story 3,” was again nominated best picture. As was No. 6, “Inception,” and No. 13, “True Grit.” Still working. Still going strong.

This year? A different story.

The No. 1 box-office hit? The last “Harry Potter,” which wasn't among the nominees. The remainder of the top 5 is strewn with the latest iterations, or regurgitations, of pop-cultural junk food: “Transformers,” “Twilight,” “Hangover” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Pixar couldn't even help since their 2011 offering, “Cars 2,” while a box-office hit at No. 8, was never a critical hit and never an Academy consideration.

Here. This is where this year's nominees—nine with the new rules—wound up in terms of domestic box office:

I spend a lot of time looking at box office but even I was shocked by the numbers. Less “The Help” being the highest-ranking best-picture nominee at No. 13 than the rest of it. “Moneyball” is really the second-highest-grossing film among the nominees? “The Artist” is really only at $12 mil? “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never” grossed more than all but two of these films?

In other words, a few years after irrevocably altering historic Academy parameters for the sake of popularity and TV ratings, we're right back where we started from: no No. 1s, no top 10s. It's like a reverse of Al Pacino's famous line in “Godfather III”: Just when the Academy thinks it's brought us together, they pull us apart. And by “they” I mean us.

Arguing with the Academy over its nominations is like arguing with your grandparents over politics. Even if they could hear you, there's not much point in it. You'll never agree.

Or will you? I'm curious how my 2011 Oscar nominations compared with the Academy's:

• BEST PICTURE: Four of five. I would've assumed “Tree of Life” not making the cut rather than “Young Adult.”
• BEST DIRECTOR: Three of five. I'm fine with their choices. It's a tough category. As best picture used to be before the New Happiness. 
• BEST ACTOR: Three of five. I'll take my five.
• BEST ACTRESS: Two of five. Grandma likes biopics more than I do. And she thought that Charlize Theron was just mean.
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: One of five, the likely winner, Christopher Plummer.
• BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: One-half of five, Jessica Chastain, but for a different movie. I went “Taking Shelter,” they went “The Help.” I trended young, as AMPAS used to in this category.
• BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Three of five. But I'm fine with their choices. Well, I would've gone Diablo over Woody, but you know how much Grandpa likes Woody. Plus that Diablo was just mean. And didn't she used to be a stripper or something?
• BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Four of five. They went “Ides of March,” I went “Captain America.” I stand by the good Captain.

So more agreement than not in the non-acting categories (14 out of 20), and more not than agreement in the acting categories (6 1/2 out of 20). Particular disagreement with supporting and with women.

Overall, though, in a squeaker, I find I do agree with the Academy more than not: 20 1/2 out of 40.

“Charlize was just mean in that movie.”

I'm not a fan of the snubbed meme but “Young Adult” was snubbed, man, massively snubbed. It was the best picture of 2011 that didn't get ... what ... anything? Not even Charlize Theron? Not even Charlize Theron. No Diablo Cody, no Jason Reitman. Nothing. Please see it anyway. It was just one of the best movies of the year.

And if you'd asked me which was more likely: that “War Horse” wouldn't get nominated best picture or “The Adventures of Tin Tin” wouldn't get nominated best animated feature, I would have bet $1,000 on the former.

“The Artist” has 10 noms. Does that lead? No, “Hugo” with 11. “The Descendants” has five noms. It feels like it's “The Artist”'s to lose right now. 

Other surprises? Pleasantly, both Terrence Malick (for best director) and “The Tree of Life” (for best picture) were nominated. Albert Brooks was not. No Leo DiCaprio or Michael Shannon, either. No...

Here, let's take it category by category:

BEST PICTURE

• The Artist
• The Descendants
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• The Help
• Hugo
• Midnight in Paris
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life
• War Horse

What percentage of the vote did you need again to make this list? And by how much did “War Horse” and “Extremely Loud” squeak over? And by how much did “Young Adult” not? “War Horse,” Jesus. It's a horrible lie of a film. But its main character was brave ... was brave ... was brave ...

BEST DIRECTOR

• Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
• Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
• Terence Malick, “The Tree of Life”
• Alexander Payne, “The Descendants”
• Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”

No Bennett Miller. A bit of a surprise. No David Fincher, who got the DGA nod. Malick instead. Good for the Academy. All the nominated directors' films were nominated best film, but it still feels like a two-film race: “The Artist” vs. “The Descendants.”

BEST ACTOR

• Demián Bichir, “A Better Life”
• George Clooney, “The Descendants”
• Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
• Gary Oldman, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
• Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”

Demian! Bro. Now we have to all see that movie when it arrives. Oh, it came and went? Last July? Apologies. Lo siento. Put it in your queue, Netflixers. Quickly, quickly. No Leo nod for “J. Edgar,” no Fassbender for “Shame,” no Michael Shannon for “Take Shelter.” Somewhere, Vinny cries. 

BEST ACTRESS

• Glenn Close, “Albert Nobbs”
• Viola Davis, “The Help”
• Rooney Mara, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
• Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
• Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Did I happen to mention yet that my choice for best actress of the year, the whole fucking year, Charlize Theron in “Young Adult,” not even nom'ed? She should've gained 40 pounds for the role. Admittedly, thankfully, it's a stacked category this year, but two of the frontrunners, Streep and Williams, didn't do much for me. Plus I'm tired of these statuettes going to biopic (rhymes with myopic) portrayals. Well, clears the field for me. Makes rooting interests easier. Go Viola!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Kenneth Branagh, “My Week with Marilyn”
• Jonah Hill, “Moneyball”
• Nick Nolte, “Warrior”
• Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
• Max Von Sydow, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

I guess the narrative will be that Max von Sydow, a surprise, nudged out Albert Brooks, a perceived front-runner. But in a certain sense I still don't know what Jonah Hill is doing on this list. Or Kenny B for that matter. Or, hell, Nolte. When did that push begin? Can we see Oscar ad budgets for each film?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Berenice Bejo, “The Artist”
• Jessica Chastain, “The Help”
• Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”
• Janet McTeer, “Albert Nobbs”
• Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Where's Shailene Woodley? Where's Evan Rachel Wood? I'd take off Bejo (much as I enjoy seeing her on the red carpet) or McCarthy (much as I enjoy a comedic role being honored; but let's face it, she won it for the heart-to-heart at the end).

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”
• J.C. Chandor, “Margin Call”
• Asghar Farhari, “A Separation”
• Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
• Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids”

Farhari is a pleasant surprise here. I like the “Margin Call” shoutout. Deserved. Diablo, you wuz robbed.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, “The Ides of March”
• John Logan, “Hugo”
• Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
• Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, “The Descendants”
• Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, “Moneyball”

I still would've given it to “Captain America” over “Ides of March.” I'm serious. You try to adapt a 70-year-old comic book, see how far you get.

Enough for now. Thoughts?

Seriously, Academy?

BEST PICTURE

• The Artist
• The Descendants
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life
• Young Adult

And the winner should be...

Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life”

Because: The dinosaur, which bothers so many, is exactly the point. The movie focuses on a boy and a family in Waco, TX, in the 1950s but it includes the beginning and end of time. It enfolds religion with science. In doing so, it attempts to answer the question that Job, and all of us, ask of God: Why do you allow such suffering? In the Old Testament, God answered, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?” Terrence Malick takes us there. No other movie has this scope or this ambition. Few ever have. This is what movies were meant to do.
Chance: In hell. Probably won't even get nom'ed.

BEST DIRECTOR

• Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
• Terence Malick, “The Tree of Life”
• Bennett Miller, “Moneyball”
• Nicolas Winding Refn, “Drive”
• Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”

And the winner should be...

Terrence Malick, “The Tree of Life”

Because: For the reasons above. For the patterns of life. For the intermingling of science and religion. For reminding us that nature is what we are while grace is what we aspire to be.
Chance: Fat.

BEST ACTOR

• Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
• Michael Fassbender, “Shame”
• Gary Oldman, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
• Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”
• Michael Shannon, “Take Shelter”

And the winner should be....

Brad Pitt

Because: He showed his age, his lighter side, his rage, his humor. Because he was interested and interesting.
Chance: Pretty good. Some say Pitt, some say Clooney. They could be the tomato-tomatah of this year's Oscar race. 

BEST ACTRESS

• Juliette Binoche, “Certified Copy”
• Viola Davis, “The Help”
• Rooney Mara, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” *
• Charlize Theron, “Young Adult”
• Mia Wasikovska, “Jane Eyre”

And the winner should be....

Charlize Theron

Because: She created one of the most original characters to come out of Hollywood in years—and she did it flawlessly. Because she made us care about an awful, awful person. Because while her character's personality was an outlier, her situation was representative and sympathetic. Because she made us laugh. Because in the end she was just like us: she didn't change.
Chance: The buzz, stronger this summer, is currently elsewhere. But make no mistake: this is a stacked best actress roster. 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

• Paul Bettany, “Margin Call”
• Michael Lonsdale, “Of Gods and Men”
• Brad Pitt, “The Tree of Life”
• Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
• Jeffrey Wright, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

And the winner should be....

Christopher Plummer

Because: He embodied a character, who, in the few years between living a lie and dying of cancer, lived. Because the joy in him was passed on to us. Because that's a rare gift.
Chance: He's the frontrunner.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

• Jessica Chastain, “Take Shelter”
• Mélusine Mayance, “Sarah's Key”
• Judi Dench, “My Week with Marilyn”
• Evan Rachel Wood, “The Ides of March”
• Shailene Woodley, “The Descendants”

And the winner should be....

Shailene Woodley

Because: She dipped beneath the surface of the pool and broke down and broke our hearts.
Chance: Not good. But a nom would be nice.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• J.C. Chandor, “Margin Call”
• Diablo Cody, “Young Adult”
• Étienne Comar and Xavier Beauvois, “Of Gods and Men”
• Terrence Malick, “The Tree of Life”
• Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids”

And the winner should be....

Terrence Malick, “The Tree of Life”

Because: “The nuns taught us there were two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. ... Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. ... Nature only wants to please itself. Gets others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.” 
Chance: I think it'll have to accept being slighted, forgotten, disliked.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• John Logan, “Hugo”
• Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, “Captain America”
• Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
• Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash, “The Descendants”
• Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, “Moneyball”

And the winner should be....

Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, “Moneyball”

Because: The movie is based upon a true story about a group of misfit ballplayers who get together and do well, and against all odds ... win nothing. They don't win the World Series. They don't go to the World Series. They're always stopped. So the big question for anyone watching with any knowledge of baseball history is ... how do they end it? They ended it with a man who was bloody from being first through the wall. They ended it with a guy who hit a homerun and didn't know it. They ended with the hero caught in a moment of indecision and tension but possible epiphany and release. They ended it in a place that allowed us to carry something beautiful and fragile from the theater.
Chance: Good. Although that would be two years in a row for Sorkin. “The Descendants,” I assume, is the big competition here.

Your results may, and should, vary...

After the Oscar noms come out tomorrow morning we'll have the usual endless talk of how the Academy snubbed this or that actor or director. Not a fan. The very nature of the conversation is snubbing someone, since it implies that one of the nominees isn't good enough to have been nom'ed in the first place. If the conversationalists owned up to it ... But they never do. They talk as if the Academy left off this or that front-runner when it had an infinite number of open slots.

Here are my choices in the eight main Oscar categories. As always, this is preference not prognostication. I guess I snubbed Meryl Streep and George Clooney, didn't I, for the likes of Mia Wasikovska and Michael Fassbender. I also chose Brad Pitt twice. What's the opposite of snubbing? Hugging? Spooning? I found the two screenplay categories the toughest to complete, because Original Screenplay had too many possibilities and Adapted too few. I got to four quickly but the fifth required work.

Feel free to post your rooting interests, or anyone I've missed, below. I'll post my winners later today.

* Review of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” posted later this week. I have yet to see “Albert Nobbs.”

Remember this post about the most filmed character ever? Of course you do. You're an avid reader.

In my search for the most filmed character, I wound up settling on Santa Claus (814 times) and Jesus Christ (350 times), but was curious if it was possible to sort IMDb's archive for a more comprehensive and accurate list. Wouldn't this be worthwhile? Wouldn't it tell us the kinds of stories that matter to us? And wouldn't this give us some indication of who we are as a people?

I suggested as such when I wrote IMDb's Help Desk.

Here's the answer I received:

Hello

Thanks for your message. I am afraid we do not have this feature, sorry.

----
Regards,
Alex
The IMDb Help Desk

What marvelous things IMDb could do with its database. What it's doing instead.

SPOILERS: HERE I COME

Mavis Gary is one of the most original characters American cinema has produced in years and Charlize Theron totally embodies her. So where’s the buzz? The film, and Theron, had caché among critics last summer but landed with hardly a noise in December. Maybe Paramount pushed it poorly; “Young Adult” has never appeared in more than a thousand theaters. Maybe critics haven’t shouted loudly enough. Some of them seem put off by the film’s dark humor, too. Is the audience as well? When Patricia, Paige and I saw the movie in a small, downtown Seattle theater with two dozen other people, I got the feeling we were the only ones laughing.

But man were we laughing.

The Concept
A writer of a series of young adult novels centering around the solipsistic machinations of high school girls, Mavis lives in a high-rise condo overlooking the Mississippi river in downtown Minneapolis. Nights are for drinking (and one-night stands), mornings are for hangovers (and regret), afternoons are for coffee with friends, or cadging bits of overheard dialogue from teenage girls—such as the Office Depot clerk who mentions her “textual chemistry” with a boy, which Mavis then includes in her next book.

But the routine is getting old, a new “Waverly Place” book is due, and after staring at the blank page of “Chapter One” in her computer she distracts herself with email. Along with the usual spam and Facebook crap, there’s a message, “Look who’s arrived!,” with a picture of the new baby of Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), Mavis’ high school boyfriend, who still lives in her hometown of Mercury, Minn. And it dawns on Mavis: this is the solution to her misery. Not to have a baby of her own but to win Buddy back. She’s 37 but it’s as if she’s still involved in the machinations of high school girls. It’s as if she never grew up.

That’s the film’s tagline, by the way: “Everyone gets old. Not everyone grows up.” Why doesn’t Mavis?

When We Grow Up
You can blame what she calls “Y.A.,” the young-adult novels she’s been writing for ... 10 years? Fifteen years? They’ve stunted her. Her imaginative world has never left high school.

You can blame her beauty, which is otherworldly (this is Charlize Theron, after all), and which, even at 37, allows her to get away with shit mere mortals can’t. “Guys like me are born loving women like you,” says Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), one of the guys she ignored in high school, when she returns to Mercury. It’s not necessarily a compliment. To either one of them.

You can blame alcoholism. More on this later.

Mavis may also be a victim of the American myth of “getting out,” embodied, most notably, in the early songs of Bruce Springsteen: It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling outta here to win, etc. This is exactly what Mavis did. She saw Mercury as a town full of losers, so she pulled out of there to win. She made it all the way to the big city, to Minneapolis, but discovered another dead end. It’s a familiar story: She escaped Mercury but can’t escape herself. The look of disgust on her face isn’t just for what she sees around her—the sad little malls, the sad little people—but for the sad little person inside her.

She knows this, too, deep down. She’s not dumb. The opposite. “Young Adult” is a movie about delusions, and Mavis’ are whoppers, but she maintains them through her own deeply skewed internal logic. She maintains them because she can argue so well.

When Matt reminds her that Buddy Slade has a wife, she counters, “No, he has a baby. And babies are boring.” When Buddy says he feels like a zombie from all the sleepless, new-baby nights, she seizes upon it. “It’s a pretty strong statement to make,” she tells Matt later. “A zombie is a dead person, Matt.” Finally when she makes her play, and Buddy, astonished, tells her, “I’m a married man,” she responds sweetly, as if they were talking about an addiction, “I know. We can beat this thing together.”

It’s hilarious and awful and delusional, but what she’s offering is actually enticing— and not just because Charlize Theron is offering it. Family means responsibility, which means roots, which means being stuck in one spot for the rest of your life. It’s a trade-off everyone makes. Mavis is offering Buddy what age and responsibility tend to restrict: possibility and freedom.

It’s a Shame About Mavis
Even so, every one of her scenes with Buddy is excruciating. During her road trip to Mercury, she rewinds the same ancient mixed tape, the one that reads MAD LOVE, BUDDY on the spine, so she can listen, over and over, to “The Concept,” an awful, early-’90s college-radio song by Teenage Fanclub. It’s their song. Yet when Buddy’s wife, Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), drumming for the all-mom band “Nipple Confusion” at the bar, Champion O’Malley’s (“Where everyone’s a winner”), launches into the band’s opening song, it’s, yep, the same song. One senses that this is now a song Buddy shares with Beth—as he shares a life with Beth. Mavis senses this, too, and for a second she pulls away in anger and disappointment. For a second, there’s clarity. Then she looks over at Matt. He’s eyeing her sympathetically, feeling sorry for her, which, to Mavis, is the exact opposite of the way the world is. She feels sorry for them, not the other way around. So she narrows her eyes and leaps back in. She leans close to Buddy, and shouts, happily, over the music, “I think this song was playing the first time I went down on you!”

She’s delusional about her career, too. A few years earlier, she was written up in the Mercury paper: a “local girl makes good” kind of thing. But in an exchange with a clerk at a local bookstore, it comes to light that: 1) she doesn’t get true author credit on her books; the Waverly Place series creator, “Jane Mac Murray” (the F.W. Dixon of Y.A.), does; and 2) the series isn’t popular anymore. What her publisher wants from her is the last book in the series so he can end it. After which Mavis will have ... what exactly? Not much. She’ll have spent a dozen years writing someone else’s books.

Most importantly, she’s delusional about the way people view her—particularly the people of Mercury. She assumes envy: for her looks, for her career, for the fact that she got out of Mercury in the first place. This envy sustains her. But after Buddy rejects her advances at the baby-naming ceremony (“You’re better than this,” he says with finality), she has a climactic scene with Beth and guests out on the front lawn, in which she spews a rambling, drunken, expletive-laden diatribe against the entire town. Then she beseeches Buddy: “Why did you invite me?” Meaning: Why am I here if you didn’t want to change your life for me? And that’s when her world gets upended. Buddy tells her he didn’t invite her; Beth did. She felt sorry for her. They all do. That look Matt shot her at Champion O’Malley’s? That’s how they all feel. It’s obvious she’s having some kind of mental breakdown. Hey, they just want to help.

Low
There’s been talk of a supporting-actor nomination for Patton Oswalt, but I don’t see it, to be honest. He good, but he doesn’t blow me away the way that Charlize Theron blows me away. The range she displays—from full-on bitchery to abject, near-naked vulnerability—is stunning.

But I do love their scenes together. They have chemistry, and sharp conversation, and both are blunt in a way that the nice folks of Mercury are not. In high school, they had lockers close enough to each other that he remembers the heart-shaped mirror inside hers; but she only remembers him as “the hate-crime guy,” as a victim of a brutal, homophobic jock attack in the woods, which garnered national media attention until it came to light that he wasn’t gay after all. Since it was no longer a “hate crime,” just a horrendous one, it was no longer a story, and the press stopped caring. But Matt carries the reminders. He still walks with crutches. He pisses sideways. He’s a shattered physical reminder—to us—how awful high school was; and he’s a verbal reminder–-to Mavis—how awful she was. He mentions the heart-shaped mirror inside her locker. “I think you looked at that mirror more often than you looked at me,” he says.

After the front-lawn debacle, Mavis flees to Matt’s house, which he shares with his sister, Sandra (Collette Wolfe); and as she stands there, vulnerable, askew, fruity beverage spilled over the front of her frilly white dress, he tries to break down her quixotic quest. Why Buddy? he asks. He’s a good man, she responds; he’s kind. “Aren’t other men kind?” he asks. She restarts: “He knew me when I was at my best,” she says, meaning high school. “You weren’t at your best then,” he says. “Not then.”

It’s a great scene. Mavis idealizes her high school years but Matt implies she’s better now, and I tend to agree. Throughout the movie, there’s little that is sympathetic or representative about her—she’s an awful person on an awful mission: a “psycho prom-queen bitch,” in the words of one of Beth’s friends—but there is something representative about her situation. Life didn’t pan out for her. That’s most of us. She lives alone. She’s lonely. Like many. Like Matt. You could say the very thing she’s holding onto—the image of her perfect, high-school prom-queen self—is the very thing she needs to let go if she’s going to have any chance at happiness. And she does. She finally breaks down, and falls into Matt’s arms and into his bed. The whole thing is clumsy and human and thus has a kind of beauty; and when she wakes up the next morning, with Matt’s arm flopped across her waist, echoing the one-night stand Mavis had at the beginning of the movie, we wonder, “What now?”

In Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” the chorus goes:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

So we’re wondering. Has Mavis forgotten her perfect offering? Has the light gotten in?

Achin’ to Be
Upstairs in the kitchen, she runs into Sandra, gets a cup of coffee, and breaks down further. She’s an open wound now. The walls that protected her are finally gone.

Would “Young Adult” have been as good a movie if it had continued in this direction? I doubt it. The way it ends feels exactly right to me. It feels like a continuation of an earlier, key scene when Mavis, at her parents’ house, wonders why her mother still hangs the wedding photo of Mavis and her ex-husband. Mavis has excised that failed marriage from her life and her mind. It’s part of her non-perfection. But her mother, Hedda (Jill Eikenberry), has her own illusions to maintain—Mavis’ room looks exactly like Mavis left it two decades ago—and, as they sit at the breakfast table, Hedda makes excuses. There’s a pause. Then Mavis offers a non sequitur.

“I think I might be an alcoholic,” she says.

Wow, I thought. But the confession goes nowhere. Her parents deflect it away. Maybe it’s too much reality for them. Maybe they’re unaware of who their daughter really is. Maybe it’s a “not nice” conversation to have at the breakfast table, and this is a nice town, after all, where everyone’s a winner, and so the moment passes—a moment that could’ve been the first step on Mavis’ road to recovery.

Something similar happens at the Freehauf breakfast table. Mavis is breaking down and opening up. She says she doesn’t feel fulfilled. She hates her life. “I need to change, Sandra,” she says. Then Sandra responds:

“No, you don’t,” Sandra says.

Sandra, it turns out, is a Mavis wannabe. She’s the less pretty girl who wants to be the very pretty girl, or at least hang with her, which is what she’s finally doing. Mavis Gary is in her kitchen! She wants to get out of Mercury, too, the way that Mavis did. She still believes in the Springsteenian myth of the town full of losers. “Everyone here is fat and dumb,” Sandra says. “They don’t care what happens to them because it doesn’t matter what happens to them,” she says. “Fuck Mercury,” she says.

Mavis’ reaction? A kind of whoosh. A long exhale. “Thank you,” she says. “Whoa.” Her worldview, upended the day before, is back in place. She doesn’t need to change. It’s the town that’s screwed up. The ironic kicker is that when Sandra asks to come with her to Minneapolis, a trip she hasn’t had the courage to make on her own, Mavis, restored to herself by Sandra, and feeding off of envy again, is sweetly condescending. “You’re good here, Sandra,” she says.

I.e., with the losers in this town. Where everyone’s a winner.

Free to Be, You and Me
Throughout the movie, in fast food joints and park benches, Mavis has been writing her final “Waverly Place” novel, about Kendall and her high school battles, which mirror Mavis and her current battles. One wonders how the novel might’ve ended if Sandra hadn’t opened her mouth. Instead, the Buddy figure in the story winds up dead, “lost at sea,” we’re told, while Kendall, glorious Kendall, graduates high school and leaves town knowing her best days are ahead of her. She leaves town thinking what Mavis probably thought 20 years ago when she left Mercury: “Life: here I come.”

That’s the last line. In the movie theater, I couldn’t stop smiling.

Most of us go to the movies for wish fulfillment. We want to maintain our illusions—that good conquers evil and love conquers all—but by having Sandra bolster Mavis’ illusions, screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, the team who gave us “Juno,” refuse to bolster ours. We want to believe in self-help notions of progress and betterment, and dramatic notions of resurrection after a fall, and “Young Adult” doesn’t play this game. Mavis’ delusions, close to being killed, are actually made stronger by the end. And over the closing credits we hear Diana Ross sing the following:

Well, I don't care if I'm pretty at all
And I don't care if you never get tall
I like what I look like, and you're nice small
We don't have to change at all

It’s from the quintessential album of 1970s-style possibility and betterment, “Free to Be, You and Me.” But what’s the promise of that last line? The one thing that can’t be promised. The song’s implication is that, though we change, we can still hold onto the best, unchanging part of ourselves—the part of me that likes you, and the part of you that likes me. It’s a sweet thought, but it’s also the thought that propels Mavis on her psycho-bitch misadventures. What is Mavis saying to Buddy throughout this film if not what Diana says at the end of the song? “I don't want to change, see, because I still want to be your friend—forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.”

I assume all of this is too cynical for most moviegoers. I assume that’s why the movie hasn’t done better. To me, it felt like a breath of fresh air. To me, after the supercharged lies of most movies, it felt a little like life.

I'm 49. I've run out of room. I'm bumping my head against it. But maybe these minstrels will soothe my jangled nerves.

All week long Seattle has been celebrating with an extra coat of frosting on the city. It's nice what they'll do to make a Minneapolis boy feel at home, but it is beginning to feel a bit like the relatives who overstay their welcome: Initial joy followed by fun followed by “Oh yeah, this” followed by “Really?” followed by “Seriously, dudes.”

Here's to joy and fun.

Seattle University, Sunday, January 15, 2012