In the 1950s, among baseball fans across the country and New York City kids in particular, the question was “Willie, Mickey or the Duke?”

It turned out to be the wrong question. It was circumscribed by time and place—1950s, New York, center field—and anyway Duke Snider, who led the 1950s in homers, faded in the LA sun, and Mantle crumpled under bad knees, leaving only Willie and his .302 batting average and 660 career homeruns in the discussion—even if modern stats such as OBP and OPS have resurrected Mantle back into it.

No, the true argument was Willie, Mickey or the Hammer, as as in Henry Aaron, another kid who arrived in the bigs in the early 1950s and rewrote the record books. They were the three preeminent players of their era.

In the last two years we’ve had well-received biographies written on all three: “Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend” by James Hirsch; “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood” by Jane Leavy; and “The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron” by Howard Bryant. I’ve now read all three.

Leaving aside the publishing industry’s awful penchant for titular absolutes, for “The Last X” or “The End of Y” (Aaron wasn’t the last hero and Mantle certainly wasn’t the last boy); and ignoring, for the moment, which of the three was the better player (OK, I still choose Mays), a new question emerges: Leavy, Bryant or Hirsch?

I can’t go Bryant, which is too bad. Hank Aaron’s life and career, more than Mays’ (who was more insulated), spanned the great racial divide of our country. He began playing in the Deep South in an era of segregation and lynchings, and came to true national prominence in a post-civil-rights era of Wheaties commercials and Jesse Jackson press conferences. He's also the underdog: the great player left out of the discussion until everyone suddenly realized that he was the guy who was going to break the game's greatest record. It should be a fascinating story. Part of it is. But Bryant spends too much time pushing us toward a specific viewpoint, his “last hero” viewpoint, and becomes annoying. He makes excuses for Aaron. He doesn’t just let him be. He spends so much time trying to make us like Henry Aaron, I actually began to dislike Henry Aaron.

James Hirsch isn’t pushing us toward a particular viewpoint with his subject. But “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend” is still a monumental book in the sense that we view Mays from a distance. It’s an authorized biography but apparently that didn’t mean much greater access. It meant, Yeah, go ahead, whatever. It’s a fine baseball book, and the chapter “Miraloma Drive,” about the difficulty Mays had buying a home in San Francisco in the late 1950s, should be made into a movie—either HBO or theatrical. But I still don’t get a true sense of the man.

Leavy is the best writer of the bunch, and she gets closest to her subject—colonoscopy close. Mantle was dead by the time she began writing but she did interview him in 1983 and gives us a scene of Mantle making a late-night, drunken pass, hand up her skirt, then passing out on top of her. It’s pretty sad. She gives us Mantle’s positives and negatives but lets us make up our own minds. She’s basically saying: This is the way some people saw him; this is the way other people saw him. Here’s some good he did. This is destruction he left in his wake. This is how he acknowledged that destruction.

Some folks want to prop up our heroes; they want us to return to the era of ghost-written hagiographies. They miss the point. I keep returning to something actor Philip Seymour Hoffman told critic David Edelstein in 2005. He was talking as an actor toward his character but he could have been a biographer, or any writer really, talking about his subject:

The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character. The harder you are, the more empathy you'll gain, ultimately, by the end. ... [Because] I think deep down inside, people understand how flawed they are. I think the more benign you make somebody, the less truthful it is.

The Aaron bio is benign and thus other. The Mays bio is distant and thus other. The Mantle bio gives us the flaws and joys and horrible, horrible moments but what feels like the whole man. I always thought Mantle was a dull boy: stolid and strong and sun-bleached and stupid. I came away from “The Last Boy” with admiration and empathy. I came away grateful.

Is this the only photo of the three of them together? It's the only one I could find--and Mantle was retired by the time it was taken. No photog got a shot of them in some All-Star Game in the late 1950s or early 1960s? We get Mays and Mantle (at All-Star Games and before the '62 World Series), and Mantle and Aaron (before the '57 and '58 World Series), and of course Mays and Aaron (all the time), but not all three together. Except for this. For now. Someone out there, some newspaper, some magazine, some photographer, has a better shot. I know it.

“Feeling wrapped in light gives me a sense of spiritual atmosphere. You've got light, you needn't feel alone.”

--Cinematographer Sven Nykvist (1922-2006), in the documentary “Ljuset håller mig sällskap” (“Light Keeps Me Company”), which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Some of the movies Nykvist photographed:

• 1993 What's Eating Gilbert Grape 
• 1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors
• 1989 New York Stories (segment “Oedipus Wrecks”)
• 1988 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• 1983 Star 80
• 1982 Fanny and Alexander
• 1978 Autumn Sonata
• 1978 Pretty Baby
• 1976 Face to Face
• 1973 Scenes from a Marriage
• 1972 Cries and Whispers
• 1970 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• 1968 Hour of the Wolf
• 1966 Persona
• 1963 Winter Light
• 1961 Through a Glass Darkly
• 1960 The Virgin Spring

In case you were wondering how the best picture nominees look as ranked by Rotten Tomatoes ...

By Top Critics:

The Artist: 100%

Moneyball: 97%

Midnight in Paris: 95%

Hugo: 92%

The Descendants: 90%

The Tree of Life: 88%

War Horse: 82%

The Help: 68%

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: 51%

By all critics:

The Artist: 97%

Hugo: 94%

Moneyball: 94%

Midnight in Paris: 93%

The Descendants: 90%

The Tree of Life: 84%

War Horse: 76%

The Help:76%

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: 46%

What surprised me? Not the less-than-spectacular numbers for “Tree of Life,” which I expected, since I know some critics didn't like it or didn't have patience for it or it wasn't what they want in a movie.

I'm a bit surprised that “The Descendants” wasn't higher. Fifth of the nine nominees? Behind “Midnight in Paris”?

I'm even more surprised that “War Horse” didn't tank. Top critics gave it 82%. Maybe we need to redefine “top.”

But I'm most surprised that “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” wound up with the kind of low numbers I thought “War Horse” would have. “Extremely” is considered rotten in both rankings. Has any best picture nominee ever had such low RT ratings? Even “The Blind Side,” which also starred Sandra Bullock, went 62%/66%.

**

After a quick search, I discovered “The Reader” went 56%/62% in 2008. So there is rotten precendent, just not as rotten. The connection, of course, is that both films were directed by Stephen Daldry.

I like collecting quotes. I guess I've been doing it since I began to care about serious reading and writing, which was probably in college. I used to write favorites on the inside cover of whatever sad journal I was keeping at the time. The usual undergraduate stuff:

“Everyone is broken by life ... afterward some are stronger in the broken places.”
--Ernest Hemingway

And:

“The God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister!”
--Bono

Here are a few of the movie lines from 2011 that stuck with me. Some are short, some are long. Some I can quote; some I just love. There's life advice and contextual stuff that I imagine myself repeating down the road. The Malick quote is already part of my life. It's changed, or at least articulated, some way that I see the world.

No back-and-forth exchanges. That's a whole other beast. So you won't get anything like this from “Moneyball”:

Peter Brand: It's a metaphor.
Billy Beane: I know it's a metaphor.

Or this from “Young Adult”:

Matt: What're you doing back in Mercury? You moving back?
Mavis: Course not. Gross.

Feel free to add your own in the comments field below.

10. “I didn’t know that was your diary; I thought it was a very sad, handwritten book.”
--Brynn (Rebel Wilson), the Brit roommate from hell, to Annie (Kristen Wiig), in “Bridemaids.” Original screenplay by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. One of many I could've chosen from this movie. I think I've probably quoted the “Daily Show” line more than any, but this one relates so well to the sad journals I used to keep.

9.  “Because you’re his girlfriend he’s got cancer you cheated on him you fucking lunatic!”
-- Kyle (Seth Rogen) to Rachael, the girlfriend from hell, when asked why he doesn't like her, in “50/50.” Original screenplay by Will Reiser. It's less the insult than the exasperrated run-on quality of it. I included no punctuation because Rogen doesn't imply any. It's Joycean in its stream-of-consciousness.

8. “If you're first out the door, that's not called panicking.”
-- John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) to Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) in “Margin Call.” Original screenplay by J.C. Chandor. What I love is the unmentioned follow-up: So what DO you call it? You call it survival, I suppose, or dickishness or reptilian. You call it capitalism. You call it (see no. 1) the way of nature.

7. “When you’re dealing with a kid or an adult or a horse, treat them the way you’d like them to be, not how they are now.“
-- Buck Brannaman in the documentary ”Buck.“

6. ”You are about a hundred miles from smart.“
-- Matt King (George Clooney) to Sid (Nick Krause) in ”The Descendants.“ Original screenplay by Alexander Payne. A second later, the kid demonstrates that he's closer to smart. Or at least closer to pain—and smart enough, or kind enough, not to bring it up during the pain of others.

5. ”That’s how I know he can be beaten. Because he’s a fanatic. And the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt.“
--George Smiley (Gary Oldman) in ”Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.“ Adapted screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, from the novel by John LeCarre. Although aren't we all concealing secret doubts? Although I guess for some our doubts aren't so secret. For the fanatic they would have to be. 

4.  ”If the sun were to explode you wouldn't even know about it for eight minutes because that's how long it takes for light to travel to us. For eight minutes the world would still be bright and it would still feel warm.“
--Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), in voiceover, in ”Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.“ Adapted screenplay by Eric Roth, from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.

3. ”Fuck you, you fucking fuck.“
-- T-shirt worn by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) in ”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.“ In case anyone's thinking belated birthday or early Valentine's Day gift: I'm a medium.

2. ”My death, of course, will quickly vindicate those who call me naïve or idealistic, but I will be freed of a burning curiosity and, God willing, will immerse my gaze in the Father's and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This thank you which encompasses my entire life includes you, of course, friends of yesterday and today, and you, too, friend of the last minute, who knew not what you were doing. Yes, to you as well I address this thank you and this farewell, which you envisaged. May we meet again, happy thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen. Insha'Allah.“
-- Christian (Lambert Wilson) in ”Of Gods and Men.“ Xavier Beauvois (adaptation et dialogue), Etienne Comar (scenario).

1. “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.”
-- Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) in voiceover in “The Tree of Life.” Original screenplay by Terrence Malick.

E/W.

“Has there ever been a more decent, upstanding, all-American president, with his dog and his family and his Apollo Theatre song solos, treated more shamefully by his opponents? I’d be more horrified by the abuse if I wasn’t sure it was backfiring.”

--Joan Walsh, “Demonizing the decent guy who is president: Will the crazy-nasty GOP attacks on Obama provoke a voter backlash to defend the flawed but human Democrat?,” on Salon.com.

WARNING: SPOIL YOU, YOU SPOILING SPOILERS

I believe in Lisbeth Salander.

The movies offer us a new ass-kicking heroine every other week, it seems: Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Zoe Saldana. Even Natalie Portman tried her little hand last year. Even 12-year-old Chloe Moretz.

I don’t believe in any of them. But I believe in Lisbeth Salander.

She’s not fighting men three times her size in hand-to-hand combat. She takes them down with guile and tools and fury and ruthlessness. She either meticulously plans and strikes or just grabs a golf club and strikes.

One of the great moments in the Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (“Män som hatar kvinnor”) occurs near the end, with the golf club, after Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) rescues a tied-up and tortured Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), and then, on her own, chases down Martin Vanger (Peter Haber), the neo-Nazi serial killer and general sick fuck who was torturing him. Let me repeat that. The bad guy was torturing him and she came to the rescue. Then she didn’t wait for him to recover to go after Vanger. To be honest, he’d just slow her down.

The girl who laid down and died
Here’s how original this concept is. In the 1996 movie “12 Monkeys,” directed by the unconventional Terry Gilliam, Bruce Willis plays a man from a dystopian future sent back to attain an apocalyptic virus in its pure form so an antidote can be made; Madeline Stowe plays the 1990s psychiatrist who initially thinks he’s crazy but realizes he’s telling the truth. Her world will end and almost everyone she knows will die. And they’re chasing the bad guy through the airport when Willis is shot by airport security. What does she do? Does she go after the bad guy who has the virus that will kill five billion people, including probably herself? No. She cries, kneels beside the man, and cradles his dying head in her arms. When the man dies, all movement dies with him—even with the fate of the world at stake.

Barely anyone said shit about this idiocy. It seemed natural to them. Hero falls, girl falls with him. That’s the way of movies.

Here’s what I imagine Lisbeth would say: “Madeline Fucking Stowe.” Here’s what I imagine Lisbeth would say to the movie industry, who perpetuate this kind of storyline: “Fuck you, you fucking fucks.”

So I was worried how Hollywood would handle this aspect of the story. Obviously director David Fincher makes daring movies, but the actor now playing Mikael Blomkvist, Daniel Craig, happens to be the latest James Bond, the ultimate action hero, who rescues women and saves the world. That’s his job. Is it allowable, culturally or legally, to have the current James Bond rescued by a mere wisp of a girl who then tracks down the killer on her own? Because he’d just slow her down?

The girl who does the tattooing
Fincher’s version of “Dragon Tattoo” is like a speed-reader’s version of the Swedish version and it still clocks in at more than two and a half hours; but it’s an improvement in many ways. It gives us a better sense of Lisbeth’s inner life, as well as a better sense of her relationship with Blomkvist and why she becomes distant in the sequels. It also doesn’t stick Harriet Vanger out in the Australian outback; it sticks her right under our noses.

Plus David Fincher’s signature gloom is all over it.

The novel is difficult to adapt cinematically because it really begins with three storylines:

Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) is taunted by the murderer of his beloved niece, Harriet, 40 years after her disappearance.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) loses a libel suit brought by an industrialist.

Computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) loses her longtime legal guardian for one who demands sexual favors.

The connections between the storylines are initially tangential at best. Vanger investigates Blomkvist, via Salander and her computer-hacking skills, before hiring him to look into the disappearance of Harriet. Then, for almost an hour, Blomkvist and Salander follow separate paths. He traipses about in the cold of the Vangers’ various estates on their private island in Hedestad, digging into the past and searching for Harriet’s killer, while she deals with her new legal guardian, Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen, the bad uncle of “Winter in Wartime”), a fat man who demands oral sex before allowing her access to her own money. When her computer is destroyed in an attempted subway robbery and she needs to buy a new one, he invites her to his home where he incapacitates her, ties her up and rapes her.

This is another scene I worried about in translation. The Swedish version is pretty graphic. And while the director of “Se7en” can obviously get pretty graphic, I wasn’t surprised, after the drugging and the tying up, that the camera began to pan out of the bedroom and down the narrow hallway, away from the shutting bedroom door. Yes, I thought. Leave the horror to our imaginations.

Which is exactly when Fincher brings us back into the bedroom for the brutal rape scene.

Did it seem more horrific in the Swedish version? Because I wasn’t expecting it or because it was more horrific? I remember Lisbeth limping home afterwards. We’re disappointed in her, this tough, smart girl who allows herself to get into that situation—until she reveals the camera in her bag and acts out her exquisite revenge. Fincher doesn’t give us the limping home; he reveals the awkward moments immediately after the rape. They’re in Bjurman’s place, after all. He has to untie her, after all. We see him slumped in the kitchen nook with something like guilt in his posture. “I’ll drive you home,” he offers, pathetically. When she slams the door, he thinks he’s gotten away with it.

I wonder what Bjurman thinks when Lisbeth calls and agrees to return to his place for more money. That she’s desperate? An addict? That she liked what he did? That his perversion fits into hers? Instead, he’s tasered, tied up, stripped and sodomized. He’s forced to watch a video of the initial rape and threatened with its internet upload if anything ever happens to her. Finally, she tattoos the following on his chest: I AM A RAPIST PIG. “Lie still,” she says, getting out the needle and promising blood. “I’ve never done this before.”

It’s the tattooing that makes the moment indelible. Up until then, her logic is Old Testament: an eye for an eye. But tattooing him adds something. The movie is about awful people who hide in plain sight, and Lisbeth is making sure they don’t hide too well. She’s handing out nametags. She’s branding scarlet letters.

The girl who is offered a purpose in life
What to make of the Vanger family tree? It’s a backstory better suited to novels. Henrik’s brother, Harald, is a Nazi who still lives in Hedestad, as does his daughter Celia (Geraldine James), while another daughter, Anita (Jolie Richardson), lives in London. Harriet’s father, Gottfried, also a Nazi, died the year before Harriet went missing, while Harriet’s brother, Martin (Stellan Skarsgård), now runs the company. “I’m quickly losing track of who’s who here,” Blomkvist says. Amen.

Of this crew, Martin is the one we see most often, and who’s played by the best-known actor, and who seems a decent sort. Which means, of course ... There’s a dinner over at his place with Celia and Blomkvist, and it’s one of the few moments where the harsh, Northern lighting of Sweden, which Fincher revels in, gives way to a softer, warmer lighting. It feels almost cozy in Vanger’s place—particularly with the harsh weather outside. One can even hear the wind howl. Or cry? Like a distant scream? It’s a subtle bit but people who know the story know it’s not the wind.

Blomkvist does well digging into a 40-year-old, missing persons case. The day Harriet disappeared there was a parade in town, and there’s a picture for the local newspaper of Harriet in the crowd. Blomkvist goes to the paper, retrieves the rest of the photos, digitalizes them, and creates a crude film in which it’s apparent that Harriet sees something, or someone, that stuns her. Another girl is taking her own photos behind Harriet. Might she have taken a shot of what Harriet saw?

The old inspector on the case is still alive. He tells Blomkvist that Harriet’s case is his “Rebecca case,” which is an unsolved murder case. There are several of those. There’s also a list of names and numbers written in the back of Harriet’s Bible: “Magda 32016” and “BJ 32027” and the like. Eventually the web becomes wide enough that Blomkvist feels the need for a research assistant.

Two reaction shots from this movie stay with me. When the Vanger family lawyer, Dirch Frode (Steven Berkoff), suggests to Blomkvist that they hire the girl who did the background check on him, Blomkvist responds, “The what?,” with a mixture of surprise and annoyance. He’s used to being the investigator, not the investigated. That’s the first one. Then when Blomkvist goes to recruit the girl, which finally brings our disparate storylines together, Lisbeth is wary of him until he says the line: “I want you to help me catch a killer of women.” Her reaction isn’t the blank one in the Swedish version. It’s the look of someone who is finally offered a purpose in life.

The girl who can hack into your soul
Now that I think about it, there’s a third reaction shot I love. It’s earlier in the movie. Lisbeth is meeting her boss, Armanasky (Goran Visnjic), and Frode, in a conference room in a corporate high-rise, where her mohawk, tats, boots and attitude don’t begin to fit. She asks, without worry, sitting at the other end of the long, gleaming conference table, if something was wrong with her initial report on Blomkvist. There wasn’t. They just want to know if there was anything she chose not to include. She turns away, offering her profile, and that great swoop of a mohawk, before adding,  “He’s had a long-standing sexual relationship with the co-editor of his magazine.” Pause. “Sometimes he performs cunnilingus on her.” Pause. “Not often enough, in my opinion.” By now she’s staring back at them, chewing her gum, gauging their reaction. Frode, a proper gentleman, looks away. “No,” he admits, “you were right not to include that.”

This raises a point. Once they see how good Lisbeth is, why don’t they just hire her as their investigator? Remove the middleman by hiring the middleman. As good as Blomkvist is, he’s still 20th-century: forced, like all of us, to rely upon interview and instinct to uncover the truth. Lisbeth is 21st century. She can hack into your computer and see your soul. I love the bit where Blomkvist attempts to show her something on his computer, and her impatience with his tentative movements is palpable. It’s all she can do not to grab the mouse and drive.

As for how Hollywood handles the golf-club scene? The breadth of the investigation forces hero and heroine to split up—a trope that, in thrillers, usually plays to the detriment of the heroine. Not here. Alone in Martin’s house, Blomkvist figures out Martin is the longtime serial killer just as Martin comes home. But he manages to get out of the house. Then Martin sees him and calls out to him and invites him in for a drink. Later, when he has a gun on him, when he’s about to torture and kill him, he asks why he accepted the offer, knowing what he knows, then answers his own question. “The fear of offending is stronger than the fear of pain,” he says, amused by human nature. He taunts him about Lisbeth: “I like that one. I can’t thank you enough for bringing her to me.” He’s in the process of suffocating Blomkvist when Lisbeth arrives, swings the nearest weapon, a golf club, and takes off half of Vanger’s face. Vanger flees and Lisbeth attends to Blomkvist for a second before asking a kind of permission: “May I kill him?” she asks. I forget if she waits for a response. Probably not. It would just slow her down.

The girl who rides off into the sunset
Was it worth it? Making this U.S. version so soon after the Swedish version? Fincher’s a better director, no doubt, and the acting is a little better. The script is tighter but misses the creepier elements of the serial-killer investigation. The bit with the cat is a good addition, but... I don’t quite see the point, to be honest. Other than to get Americans, who don’t read subtitles, to see the fucking thing.

As for what happened to Harriet Vanger? It’s not Martin. When he had the upper hand, he confessed to everything but not that. So there’s more unraveling to do, another half hour, really, and Fincher almost, almost, goes the route the novel went. When Harriet turns up alive—in Australia in the Swedish version, in London under her cousin’s name in the U.S. version—and we realize that she did this to save herself from her awful, abusive brother, my reaction was something like disappointment. Wait, I thought. She knew what her brother was and yet let him do what he did for 40 years?

That, it turns out, is Lisbeth’s reaction in the book:

   “Bitch,” she said.
   “Who?”
   “Harriet Fucking Vanger. If she had done something in 1966, Martin Vanger couldn’t have kept killing and raping for thirty-seven years.”

The Swedish version ignored these lines—they didn’t want to disturb the happy reunion between Henrik and Harriet—while Fincher merely alludes to them. “Harriet Fucking Vanger,” Lisbeth says at one point. But she doesn’t go further. Too bad. That’s key to me. Harriet Vanger is pretty but passive. She warns no one, passes out no nametags. She’s no hero. Most heroes, our stories tell us, are men. Most heroes, our stories tell us, save the day and ride off alone in the end.

One out of two.

“As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.”

--Adam Gopnik in the article, “THE CAGING OF AMERICA: Why do we lock up so many people?” in the January 30 issue of The New Yorker

I find it interesting that the movie with the most Academy Award nominations, “Hugo” with 11, is directed by an American but set in France, while the movie with the second-most nominations, “The Artist” with 10, is directed by a Frenchman but set in America. Artistic tips of the hat, as it were.

The nine nominees are also Wilsonian, as in August, in that almost every decade from the 20th century is represented:

• 1900s: Hugo
• 1910s: War Horse
• 1920s: The Artist, Midnight in Paris
• 1930s: The Artist, Hugo
• 1940s:
• 1950s: The Tree of Life
• 1960s: The Help
• 1970s:
• 1980s:
• 1990s:
• 2000s: Moneyball, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
• Contemporary: The Descendants

Too bad we couldn't have added this one:

• 1970s: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I can't think of other 2011 movies—decent ones—that would fill out the other decades. I'm not talking brief flashbacks, such as in “Moneyball,” with a young Billy Beane in the 1980s. I'm talking something longer and deeper (and uncut).

Another question: Which of the above films is least nostalgic about the period it portrays? “Midnight in Paris” cautions against nostalgia but still gives us rip-roaring times with Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Marion Cotillard. “The Artist” is a very relevant movie, I would argue, but its raison d'etre is a form of nostalgia. “War Horse”? It's nostalgic for John Ford movies. “The Help”? Paints pretty pictures of a brutal period; of the great American tyranny.

No, the above film least nostalgic about its time period is “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Probably why it didn't get nom'ed.

Who could forget all those crazy times in Mississippi, 1964?

Last night, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) awarded its “Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film” Award to Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist.”

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the DGA is the best single predictor of the Academy Award for best picture. Here are the DGA's award winners since 1990. The DGA feature-film achievements that didn't go on to win best picture are highlighted in bold:

• 2011: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist        
• 2010: Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
• 2009: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
• 2008: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
• 2007: Ethan and Joel Coen, No Country For Old Men
• 2006: Martin Scorsese, The Departed
• 2005: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
• 2004: Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
• 2003: Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• 2002: Rob Marshall, Chicago
• 2001: Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind
• 2000: Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• 1999: Sam Mendes, American Beauty
• 1998: Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan
• 1997: James Cameron, Titanic
• 1996: Anthony Minghella, The English Patient
• 1995: Ron Howard, Apollo 13
• 1994: Robert Zemeckis, Forrest Gump
• 1993: Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List
• 1992: Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven
• 1991: Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs
• 1990: Kevin Costner, Dances with Wolves

Seventeen-for-21. If we predicted that well, Vegas wouldn't let us in.

Each discrepancy has an explanation. Blame homophobia for 2005, xenophobia for 2000, Harvey Weinstein's hefty push for “Shakespeare in Love” for 1998, and who knows what in 1995. Opiephobia? Howard didn't even get nom'ed by the Academy for “Apollo 13,” which is much better film than the eventual winner, Mel Gibson's “Braveheart.”

I suppose the question is: How Francophobic is the Academy? Un peu? And for those who are, well, Hazanavicius has Harvey Weinstein and his heft on his side. To me that means done, over and out. La course est terminee. Felicitations, M. Hazanavicius.

First Bejo, now the DGA.

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.