As promised…Plugs.

* El Gringo from He Shot Cyrus is hosting the My Best Post blog-a-thon between today, October 3rd and October 5th. Here’s what he had to say about it:

“Everyone should participate because you’ve already written your post!

Pick your BEST post, the one you’re most proud of, and send me the link between the 3rd and the 5th. I’ll post the link and everyone can start checking out each other’s goods.

Full details can be found at: He Shot Cyrus, which is where the shindig will be going on.”

* LAMB VP of Production Nick (of Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob) has a blog-a-thon in the works. Here’s the details:

“It’s going to be the Saw Blog-A-Thon. It’ll start the Monday of the week the next one comes out, and one review will be posted a day (in other words, Saw on Monday, Saw II on Tues, Saw III on Wednesday, and Saw IV on Thursday). Then, after I see Saw V on Friday, I’ll post a review for it then.

However, I want a bit more participation, as I know not everybody is as big into the series as I am…and some people might even…*gasp*…have different opinions. So what I plan on doing is giving my review, then linking to anybody else’s review for each respective movie and start off by saying whether or not it’s a positive, negative, or neutral review (much like the LAMB MOTM). That way, I get in my review, and everybody else who wants to participate in my blog-a-thon will get links to their posts, as well. It’ll be a smorgasbord of reviews!

So if anybody is interested, I would need all reviews in by October 19, because the movie comes out on the 24, and the post for Saw goes up on the 20th. Nick can be reached here.

* Rob of Natsukashi just has this for you:

“I would like to invite any bloggers who are interested in participating in recalling a film from their past for Natsukashi, if they are so interested.”

Here’s the About page for Natsukashi with more details.

* Cinema Viewfinder will be providing coverage of the 46th New York Film Festival. Author Tony Dayoub was invited to cover it, and will have reviews, press conferences, and possibly some interviews up daily. The Festival started on 9/26 and continues to 10/12.

That’s right - the LAMB has a presence at the NYFF!

* If you’re lucky (unlucky), you’ve been visited by a commenter that goes by the name of “EVIL CLOWN” (his caps, not mine). What you might not have figured out is that it is none other than our own Piper of Lazy Eye Theater, which has undergone a transformation similar to that of it’s author’s. Here, I’ll let him tell you:

“Lazy Eye Theatre has gone through a terrible and painful transformation and is now Evil Eye Theatre. Stop by every day for new and increasingly wicked posts.”

* New York ain’t the only place the LAMB is at. We’ve gone international. Here’s the word from Colleen:

“Its Vancouver International Film Fest time, and Marina from Row Three and myself, Colleen from 353review have been covering the festival.

Approximately 40+ films to be reviewed between the to of us, plus podcasts, interviews with directors…etc.”

* Like Hitchcock? You’re in luck - Shawn of Deadpan is running a marathon of Alfred’s work, with guest bloggers and all. Here’s the post that kicks it off.

* Finally, Marilyn at Ferdy on Films, etc. will begin her annual coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival, which runs October 16-29. Look for pre-festival reviews to start Sunday, October 11, and continue through to the end. There might be some special-event coverage as well.

———————————

I guess the pressure is on me to cover the Phoenix Film Festival next year. Where are our French LAMBs to cover Cannes?

Thanks for all plugs, guys and gals.

A few weeks ago, with Piper busy doing imaginary things to imaginary people, I gave you an assignment for LAMB Grazin’ On The Plot Farm 3.0. Not to take anything away from the fine, fine folks that did partake (thank you!), but I obviously would lose a popularity contest to that dirty, stinkin’ Piper, as there were but two responses.

Nevertheless, we plow on. Read these fine, fine entries with a critical eye and vote for your favorite at the end.

Too Hot To Handle
Written and Directed by: Bob Dole
Produced by: Stolen Kansas tax money (circa 1974-1992)
Starring: Bob Dole as Rob Dole, P.I.
Zooey Deschanel as Golly
Jason Bateman as Hiccup

[Note: The following is a written description of a three-minute trailer depicting the opening scene of Warner Independent Pictures’ new thriller/comedy Too Hot to Handle.]

Thanksgiving, 2008. Topeka, Kansas.
Aged detective, Rob Dole, sits in his dimly lit living room. His left hand lights the cigarette dangling from his lips, his right grips tightly to a Webley-Fosber revolver. The clock strikes ten and there’s a sudden knock at the door. Dole blasts off four rounds right through the cheap pine boards.

A beautiful young woman pokes her head through the new door hole. “Rob?” she asks. The shadowed man shuffles behind the couch. She swings the door open and slowly walks inside. “It’s me, Molly, from Meals on Wheels. Happy Thanksgiving.”

She switches the lights on and looks around the small, dusty house. The place looks like it’s been ransacked. Piles of old newspapers are stacked next to the fireplace and empty scotch bottles have taken over the kitchen floor. The place is a dump. She clears out the sink, fills it with warm water, and places a turkey to begin thawing.

“That’ll be 42 bucks, Mr. Role.” The old retiree shuffles into the broom closet and shuts the door. “Mr. Role? I don’t have time for this. I have to meet Phillip in half an hour. The turkey’s gonna take a few hours to thaw and then I’ll be back to stick it in the oven tomorrow morning.”

The closet door opens. A string of incoherient mumbles trips out of the dark. “But, Golly, Thanksgiving’s today.” The pretty woman rolls her eyes and walks towards the closet. “Are you out of shots, Mr. Role?” No reply. “Are you out of shots, Mr. Role?” The pistol creeps out of the darkness and Molly grabs it from him and places it on the table.

“That’s better. Now, I’ve brought some spaghetti and meatballs for you tonight. I’ll be back to start cooking your turkey, tomorrow” says Molly. The door flies open violently. Rob Dole storms out of the closet and grabs Molly with his good arm. “Spaghetti and meatballs? SPAGHETTI AND MEATBALLS? That’s immigrant food! I’d rather regurgitate breakfast and eat that than touch that immigrant shit!” Molly pulls herself away from the crotchety old man and he stumbles backwards into his arm chair.

“Golly, get the hell out of here. You and Hiccup can have a great fuckin’ time eating your immigrant food!” Frustrated, Molly yells, “My name is MOLL-Y. His name is PHILL-IP! Crazy old man.” She throws the bag of food into Role’s nasty refrigerator and storms out of the house.

CUT TO: EARLY MORNING NEWS BROADCAST
“Son of Nebraska politician, Henry Bones, Phillip Bones and his girlfriend Molly Rains, were abducted in front of a diner around 11:30PM last night. A ransom note was delivered to the Bones household early this morning. The note asked for $300,000 in cash to be delivered upon further instruction.”

Back in Role’s living room, the ancient drunkard watches the news report. He looks back and forth between the television and the kitchen. Back and forth. He stands out of his chair.

Eli, the downsized former film critic of the Louisville (KY) Ledger, has been “liberated” from his upscale, balloon-mortgaged home, and has taken up residence in a dump on the outskirts of his former upscale life. A Mexican immigrant, Carlos, lives in a shack near Eli’s and shouts abuse at Eli when he isn’t regurgitating the rot-gut liquor he consumes every hour on the hour.

Eli ponders how he can find a useful—and lucrative—place in society again when, one night, he sees two men deposit a large bundle in the dump. Because of all the crime films he’s seen, Eli suspects that these are criminals dumping a body. He goes over to investigate. He finds the thawing body of a woman. The only clues to her identity are 42 bucks in Monopoly money stuffed into her mouth and a piece of paper stuffed where the sun don’t shine. The paper is an ad from an old AARP magazine showing Bob Dole extolling the virtues of Viagra.

Eli puts two and two together and figures the woman attempted to blackmail a mob figure suffering from impotence and received her “hush money” in some deep freeze. He figures he can parlay this true crime into a screenplay worth big bucks—but he has to learn more.

Eli begs enough money to buy Carlos a gallon of Gallo. While the poor slob is drunk, he hustles him onto a bus, and they head for Churchill Downs. Eli remembers a terrible evening he had at the movies, when his snobby ex-girlfriend Frieda made him go see some Frenchie movie named Pickpocket. Now thankful that he wanted to get into her pants so desperately that he agreed to see it, Eli rewinds the racetrack sequence in his head. But instead of working with a crack team, he simply lifts a few purses and then points to the staggering Carlos as the thief and runs off.

Armed with enough money to rent an SRO, a TV, and a VCR. Eli uses his precious library card to check out every George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, and Jimmy Cagney movie he can find—three in all. He has better luck with the Oceans remakes. He steals all the plot points he can, relying most heavily on The Woman in the Window for his ripped-from-the-headlines-of-the-past story. He uses the public computers at the library to type up his treatment.

Unfortunately for Eli, Dept. of Homeland Security agent Golly has been perusing the library’s records for anything that might lead him to a suspected Al Quaeda cell in Louisville. He notes the films Eli has checked out and sees Eli’s name in the computer logs. His surveillance of Eli takes him to the dump where it all began, as Eli goes to fetch Carlos for another round of pickpocketing at the track.

Sure that Carlos is actually an Afghani cleverly pretending to be blind drunk, Golly tails them both. He looks at the tote board and sees some suspicious odds flipping for a nag called Too Hot to Handle. This must be code, Golly conjectures. He moves in on Eli and Carlos and dramatically grabs Carlos by the arm, whose hiccupping has caused him to lose his balance. Eli, watching his fall guy, well, falling, runs to his aid and attempts to punch Golly in the jaw. Golly trips Eli, and a slugfest ensues; gamblers at the track place their bets on the outcome. Eventually, Golly handcuffs Eli. In the meantime, Carlos has found a quiet bathroom stall in which to sleep it off.

Golly forces Eli to take him to the SRO. The room has been ransacked and the video of The Strawberry Blonde is missing. Golly is sure it contains a crucial microdot revealing the location of secret missile silos in Freedonia. Eli tells him Freedonia is not a real place—it’s a made-up country in a Marx Brothers movie. He should not have said Marx. Golly instantly subjects him to the third degree. For two solid days, Eli is pumped for information, kept from sleeping, made to crouch in a corner until a giant roach scares him like a girl. Finally, utterly exhausted and discouraged, he says to Golly, “Look, mister, I’m so tired you’d be doin’ me a big favor if you’d blow my head off.”

Just as he says the line, Eli realizes that he’s been asleep all the time. He dreamt the whole thing. Just then, the screen goes black.

Walking down a golden beach, agent Golly waves to an attractive women on the balcony of a beach house. He walks languidly to the stairs and mounts them, and accepts a martini from the woman’s hand. She tells him Joel Coen just called and would like a meeting. Golly says he’s not ready to talk. Looking into the wide ocean, he thinks to himself, “After I find another film critic.”

With the LAMB growing to almost 50 sites, it’s high time we take a weekly look at some of the best posts from the last week from our impressive, highly diverse group. I’m going to kick it off this week, but in the future, I’d like to get your thoughts on which posts (not from your site) should be the LAMB Chops for the given week. So, if you’d like to nominate anyone for the week of February 27 - March 4, please send me an email with the subject “LAMB Chops nomination.”

As this progresses, perhaps we can start thinking widgets and/or any other ways to publicize these posts - I’m open to your ideas for this and any other LAMB projects (I’m specifically looking for cool alternatives to presenting the posts; I’m not sure I like the format you see below). For now, here are the Chops for February 20 - 26 (in no particular order).

To read the particular post that’s been Chopped, just click on the picture.

Spaghetti Sauce and Sweet Peas has some words for Ethan Coen.

Ferdy on Films’ Rod Heath breaks down the history of the Best Picture (previously posted here on the LAMB).

The Center Seat counts down the best moments from Sunday’s Academy Awards.

I’m cheating as this was posted on the 19th, but Dave’s Movie Reviews takes an in-depth look at Run Lola Run (one of my favorites) as part of it’s Foreign Film February.

Karlhungus.com has had it with anti-pirates (anti-piracy ads, that is).

Editor’s note: Welcome to the twentieth of a multi-part series (just three more remain!) dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Rod of Ferdy on Films.

It may surprise some people to learn that the pinnacle award of the Oscar evening, Best Picture, wasn’t given out amongst the first Oscars. In 1927, two awards were given, one for “Best Production,” to William Wellman’s Wings, and “Most Artistic Production,” to F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise. The following year, The Broadway Melody became the first actual Best Picture, receiving an award, then, that one might describe as a balance of those two previously cited qualities—standard of production, and artistic merit. It’s a vital point to remember in contemplation of the award, establishing that it is never merely about either the mechanics of filmmaking or the artistic purpose animating it.

The Oscars were established basically as an exercise in personal aggrandizement by Louis B. Mayer and his fellow studio cronies. But, if there’s anything more boring than the self-admiration of Hollywood, it’s the guy who whinges about it all the time. Like it or not, they soon became a fixture of the industry and, ultimately, a major cultural event—the most famous, widely seen, widely known film awards in the world, the eye of the cinema storm. Lately, more people have commented that Hollywood has become essentially divorced from the mass market it otherwise services with such felicity in giving out its awards. If the Oscars were honest about the audience it services, they would more resemble the MTV Film Awards and give out Oscars for Best Explosion. Only the French give prizes to four-hour-long movies shot with handheld cameras about crack addicts with epileptic children and magic-realist fables about flying goats who represent the history of Uzbekistan.

The Best Picture is a vote of emotion more than of either the mind or the hip pocket, though success in filling the latter is never a negative. It’s an award that admires force of effort and appeal to the senses rather than originality, ideas, or risk. It’s been through many phases. It can look relevant and inspiring, if one looks to the general excellence of the winners of the 1970s—The French Connection, The Godfather I & II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter. It can also look blind and cowardly, as in the ’60s, with victories for bloated musicals outweighing the cream, or, indeed, for most of the last decade, arguably the worst in the award’s annals. By my reckoning one great film has taken the prize since 1993— Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, not exactly an intellectual feast, but a true triumph of cinematic vision, standing tall above dribbling, clichéd dramas (American Beauty, A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby, Crash); substandard efforts by auteurs (Gladiator and The Departed); dim-witted romantic epics (Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic) and glib showbiz put-ons forgotten five minutes after watching them (Shakespeare In Love, Chicago). If I never saw half of those films again, I wouldn’t give a damn.

Perhaps the defining year for the modern Oscars was 1994. Three quality nominees — Quiz Show; The Shawshank Redemption, and Pulp Fiction—and the entertaining, popular Four Weddings and a Funeral. All were beaten by Forrest Gump, a globulus pustule of soft-headed nostalgia and ill-focused satire. Truly, stupid is as stupid does. Still, there were days when the Best Picture had self-respect as an award. It didn’t always go to films that were the best of its year, or even amongst the 10 best of the year, but then, the Academy isn’t composed of clairvoyants who could predict that shifts in taste would herald a tacky little genre film like The Maltese Falcon and a rambling, bizarre experimental epic like Citizen Kane over the refined sentiment of How Green Was My Valley.

It’s surprising how many good films have won the award (in case you’re wondering, I’ve seen 69 of the 79 winners), like the miraculous run in the mid ’50s of From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Marty—small, black-and-white, human-interest films at the height of Hollywood’s most gaudy, absurd period. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the first major film since WWII to suggest warfare wasn’t necessarily endless heroism and moral rectitude, made a fitting partner to the mighty 1930 winner All Quiet On the Western Front. Two other 1950s winners are virtually pop-art and post-modern: An American in Paris and Around the World in Eighty Days engage with a host of cultural ideas, celebrating and satirizing them all at once, and being colourful and fun whilst doing it. Admire the guts in rewarding a film as entertaining as Casablanca (1943). For all its hectoring moments, the intellectual dexterity and solidity of the character drama in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) makes Crash looks childish. The Life of Emile Zola (1937) wimps out of mentioning the issue at its core — anti-Semitism — but its study of the self-importance of the militarists and politicians behind the Dreyfus Affair is so corrosive it could have easily been about the Bush administration. Two bookend winners of the ‘60s, The Apartment and Midnight Cowboy, ravaged and buried official fantasies about what modern life was about. Teenage radicals had little look-in, but found surrogates in the political and emotional confusion of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the unfettered sexuality of Tom Jones (1963), and the righteous stand of A Man for All Seasons (1966).

And yeah, a lot of indifferent winners, some dire ones, some that just didn’t age well, like Mrs. Miniver (1942) or The Lost Weekend (1945) or Rain Man (1988). The Greatest Show on Earth (1953) remains a carnival barker yelling in your ear for two-and-a-half hours. Cimarron, 1931’s champ, is numbingly creaky compared with Frankenstein or The Public Enemy. Kramer Vs Kramer (1979) laid down the template for an entire generation of Hallmark channel productions. Gandhi (1982) begins as a stirring drama and finishes up as Great Interviews Gandhi Gave to Impressed White Guys. Rocky (1976)? How did that happen? Who the hell cares about Driving Miss Daisy (1989) or even seen Cavalcade (1933)?

To a large extent the indie revolution, in relieving Hollywood from the responsibility of making the more artistically viable films, has deeply wounded the Best Picture prize. The industry has almost abandoned mid-budget dramatic films that used to be the mainstay of the Best Picture, fragmenting the scope of the Best Picture by defining it as a crown awarded an establishment on its members and its friends. Likewise, alternative cinema can reject the necessity of selling itself to a mass audience that used to make for films of artistic worth and great public appeal, like the works of Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and David Lean. It is all too easy for modern Hollywood to freeze out the more radical fare offered up by outsiders, and difficult for films without the huge clout of public love and the money that generates, as well as the backing of powerful studio chiefs, to take the prize. This is why the pre-packaged drivel of a Paul Haggis can easily best the efforts of a Paul Thomas Anderson.

And yet, this year, each of the high-buddget nominees is considered an “independent” production. This designation means virtually nothing in such a context. Indie means something different today than when it meant Jim Jarmusch, black-and-white 16mm stock and bad sound. Yet it also means everything.

Juno, the most “indie” of these indies, isn’t exactly a Dardennes Brothers film. This story of a pregnant teen is only radical to anyone whose concept of family life is still defined by The Donna Reed Show. A late charger, Juno has attracted an audience mainly delighted by its Gilmore Girls-style TV-was-my-babysitter dialogue, and the fact that it’s the one l’il folks tale amongst this otherwise foreboding, socially critical bunch.

Atonement is the lone blast of the familiar Oscar-bait prestige picture, an adaptation of a best-selling novel with literary cred and a period English setting. Problem is, it’s a densely layered study of perspective and artistic and moral duty that essentially performs a suicide bombing on its third-act resolution—not exactly the way to becoming a heart-tugging, easily beloved romantic classic. Imagine Titanic if it was revealed at the end that Rose made up the whole idea of Jack and got into the lifeboat with her mother.

No Country for Old Men similarly explodes its own familiar elements. This counts more in No Country’s favour, however, in giving its audience all the chills and thrills of a thumping crime drama before delivering a solemn, rule-breaking finish, without which it would be a shoot-‘em-up with a pretentious title. The favourite for the award, No Country similarly possesses literary cred as an adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy, and would finally crown the Coen Brother’s rambunctious career as Hollywood’s resident, acceptable eccentrics.

Michael Clayton is another thriller with pretensions, in this case ’70s style corporate paranoia, and the closest thing to a solid, safely built, liberal message picture. In another year, it might have had a better chance, but it’s got too many capital-A Artists competing with it this year.

There Will Be Blood, generally regarded as the most ambitious and most messy of the nominees, could be mistaken for a contemporary remake of Giant until seen. It’s unlikely to win, and most likely to become the future Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane, or The Conversation—an eccentric, cultish, polarizing effort that may just stick around longer than its rivals.

Three of the five film’s directors are feature-film rookies—Tony Gilroy’s first feature, and Jason Reitman’s and Joe Wright’s second—and only Anderson’s fifth film. Times sure have changed when such untested directors are responsible for Best Picture nominees; John Ford had 84 directorial credits before gaining his first nomination and the Coen Brothers can now be considered the old guard.

Whatever the individual merits of these nominees, it’s a roster that promises the Best Picture award has caught up with the recent acting nominations in embracing new talent, and points a way out of the swaggering mediocrity of most of the recent winners.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the sixteenth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Marilyn of Ferdy on Films.

If ever there was a category that seems almost entirely irrelevant to the Oscars, it is Live Action Short Film. These nominees have been the province primarily of first-time directors, perhaps even projects for graduation from film school. They don’t get general releases in theatres, at least, not here in the States. In fact, the only short I can remember seeing in conjunction with regular theatrical runs was The Heart of the World (2000) by Canadian director and cult favorite Guy Maddin. In fact, it got played over and over with various films until I was pretty damn sick of it.

However, the very first films ever made were live action shorts. An entire industry was built on these short stories of the screen, which may be one reason the Academy has been reluctant to eliminate this category from its Oscar ballot. The first year of Oscar, two awards in this category were given: Comedy and Novelty. Novelty seemed to have encompassd adventure/documentary films, like the 1933 winner Krakatoa, which I presume showed the volcano exploding. Mack Sennett and Hal Roach films were well represented in the Comedy division.

By 1935, big-name studios like Warner Bros, Paramount, RKO, and MGM were being nominated in three new divisions: Color, One-reel, and Two-reel. (The Color division was eliminated in 1938, presumably because the technology was now well-established and not worthy of special technical recognition.) A producer for Warner Bros named Gordon Hollingshead dominated nominations in these categories for some time, with Disney Studios poking up its head now and then.

In 1957, the award got its current title, and although well-known names such as Disney, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Ismael Merchant, Claude Berri, and Jim Henson could be found among the nominees, the category was headed toward obscurity. Today, the only short films we see at the movie theatres are commercials. I can tell you, after viewing the five nominees for the 2007 Live Action Short Subject Oscar, I’m ready to start a movement to kick the commercial assault to our senses off the screen and replace it with the witty and often stunning works to be found among this neglected type of film. Here are the 2007 nominees for Best Short Film (Live Action):

Tanghi Argentini (Belgium)—Guido Thys (director) and Anja Daelemans (producer)
This 14-minute short set at Christmastime, is about André (Dirk van Dijck), an officer worker who persuades his bah-humbug colleague Frans (Koen van Impe) to teach him to tango so that he can pursue an online romance with a woman who loves the dance. The characters are sketched quickly, but indelibly, with not a speech or movement wasted in telling this charming and surprising story. Director Thys has spent much of his time in television, so he’s got the experience to work this very short short for all its worth. A real crowd pleaser, it has won numerous international awards. It would be in keeping with the early history of this category to reward such a delightful comedy, but it may seem too slight to Academy voters, particularly against some of its competitors. (Very short clip here.)

Om Natten (At Night, Denmark)—Christian E. Christiansen (director) and Louise Vesth (producer)

Another Christmastime film, this 39-minute short has the kind of gravitas the Academy seems to like in its Best Pictures, but it’s a real downer that plays more like an Afterschool Special than a well-constructed short feature. Mette (Neel Rønholt), Sara (Laura Christiansen), and Stephanie (Julie Ølgaard) are three young women desperately ill with cancer who give each other companionship and strength on the hospital ward nicknamed Death Row. The women are types (the religious good girl, the woman allied with her divorced father against the world, and the troubled smoker/drinker/wearer of black nail polish who hasn’t seen her parents in five years). Christiansen, who has a couple of directing credits, has spent most of his film career as a production manager. He simply does not have a director’s touch, letting his actors flounder and his story meander and descend into cheap melodrama. The hubby was moved to tears, but then he spent a lot of time in a hospital and so identified with the characters. I, on the other hand, was bored to tears by this predictable, morose entry. Some people are picking it to win. They might be right, but if it does, it will show Oscar really has no taste whatsoever and is all about its image. (Trailer here.)

Il Supplente (The Substitute, Italy)—Andrea Jublin (director)

This 15-minute film that seems to say that we never really grow up makes its point in a bizarrely original fashion. We are taken to a high school, meeting up with the various nerds, stuck-ups, and artsy types who war away among themselves. Into one rowdy classroom comes a man (Jublin), a substitute teacher who behaves just as savagely with the students as they do with each other. He confiscates a toy soccer ball that has been autographed by an Italian player, locates the class ass kisser and gives him a bad score on his imitation of an ass-kissing snake, is told “no” by a student when he tells her to give him a poem she is writing, and incites the class to rough up the soccer-ball kid. He is found out to be not who he was presumed to be, and ends up confronting the same challenges in the adult world he forced on the kids in the classroom. This is well executed, with energetic performances by all the players, but a philosophical voiceover by the man ruins the anarchic tone of the short and sets us up for a predictable ending. This will not win the Oscar, nor does it deserve to, but it shows the makings of an original talent in first-time director Jublin. (Very short clip here.)

The Mozart of Pickpockets (Le Mozart Des Pickpockets, France)—Philipee Pollet-Villard (director)

Pollet-Villard wrote, directed, and costars in this 31-minute romp through Paris’ petty criminal world. Philippe (Pollet-Villard) and Richard (Richard Morgiève) are crime partners who live in a tiny pension and barely survive as part of a pickpocket ring that works the various street markets. The pair is dumb and inept, but gets lucky one day when they evade the police that round up their partners, partly by having a young boy (Matteo Razzouki-Safardi) stand holding Richard’s hand. The boy follows them home. He doesn’t speak or seem to understand them, so they assume he is deaf. But they incorporate him into a new pickpocket ring, which ends as quickly as it began with Philippe getting punched in the nose. Fortunately, the boy has ideas of his own about how to lift wallets. Richard exclaims to Philippe, “I’d never have thought of it in 10 years.” Yes, these sad sacks need this boy far more than he needs them. Pollet-Villard plays a wonderful blowhard and directs his actors with great skill. The film has a spritely pace and great situational comedy that never feels cheap. Young Razzouki-Safardi is so cute that he melts your heart, and his gigantic smile at the end of the film is more than winning. This film could be a contender, though I don’t think it will win. Again, it might be too slight for the Academy, and it has stiff competition. (Clips and a “making of” in unsubtitled French here.)

The Tonto Woman (United Kingdom)—Daniel Barker (director) and Matthew Brown (producer)

This 36-minute adaptation of an Elmore Leonard short story is the best of the bunch—easily one of the best films of any length in 2007—and the one that should take the Oscar if there is any justice in the world. It’s hard to believe that this assured, taut drama about the redemption of a Mexican cattle rustler named Ruben Vega (Francesco Quinn, Anthony Quinn’s son) is the film debut of director Daniel Barker. Certainly, he had a lot of help from veteran cinematographer Ben Davis (Layer Cake, Miranda, Imagine Me & You), whose compositions are spectacularly beautiful and evocative. Film scorer Dan Jones also provides a soaring score that is definitely influenced by Elmer Bernstein. The film opens in a confessional, then is told entirely in flashback from an omniscient point of view. Vega hides on a hillside and watches a beautiful woman walk topless to a tub and water pump outside a desert shack. She pumps water into the tub and starts to wash up. After she goes back inside, Vega comes to call on her, the picture of benign politeness. She stands in the shadows for a while, then confronts him, saying that she knows he was watching her—just like all the others. She has a startling tattoo on her chin, a remnant of the 11 years she spent as a slave to the Tonto-Mohave Indians. She is Sarah Isham (Charlotte Asprey), wife of the largest cattle rancher in the area. Her husband searched for her, but when he found her, he couldn’t keep a woman who had been defiled by the “red niggers” at home with him. She remains exiled in the desert, watched over by three thugs hired by her husband, who act as drovers of this human piece of property. Vega’s actions for the rest of the picture to redeem her back into society are also his redemption. Every scene is packed with emotional truth and dignity, acted out by a top-flight cast.

All these films and the nominated animated shorts are touring in select cities courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. I would expect a DVD release sometime soon. Perhaps home viewers will embrace this unique and wonderful form of cinema that the big studios and distributors have all but forgotten.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the seventh of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Marilyn of Ferdy on Films, etc.

M…A…K…E…U…P! Bang! The giant powder puff slaps some poor sap in the kisser. Perhaps this vaudeville gag was in the minds of the Academy during the three uninterrupted decades it ignored the talents of movie makeup artists. It certainly had nothing to do with achievements in makeup, from Castle monsters to Bette Davis’ various grotesques in both her younger and later years.

The first Academy Award for Makeup—an honorary one at that—went to William Tuttle in 1964 for the many looks he created for Tony Randall in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. One more honorary award followed in 1968, to John Chambers for Planet of the Apes, and then the award went back into the deep freeze.

Finally, in 1981, the Academy established the first competitive race for the Makeup Oscar, with Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) beating Stan Winston (Heartbeeps). The award became a yearly ritual in 1984.

Oscar favors the imagination when it comes to makeup. Monkeys (especially monkeys!), insects, ghosts, vampires, aliens, and cartoon characters have all captured the Academy’s fancy. Period makeup also impresses, but the Academy seems to have grown tired of powdered wigs and beauty spots, casting its historical gaze toward the more flamboyant Costume Design category. Lately, Lord of the Rings-style legends have been all the rage, but you can always get a few non-PC votes for cross-dressers and fatties. In one case, a prosthetic nose, though not specifically nominated itself, may have helped Nicole Kidman garner her Best Actress statuette for being willing to look ordinary on the big screen.

This year, legendary figures, various Eddie Murphys (including a fatty), and another beauty with a prosthetic nose represent the work of the three duos vying for the top honor.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End—Ve Neill and Martin Samuel

There were 68, count ’em, 68 makeup artists, including contact lens specialists, in the makeup department for the third Pirates movie. In an interesting twist, nominee Martin Samuel wasn’t among them. The Academy, I suppose, had to account for the designs created by Samuel for the first two Pirates movies. Indeed, since the first Pirates film was nominated, it seems like this year’s nod is a tad redundant. (And why was the second one ignored? What does it matter? Pan’s Labyrinth was a slam-dunk last year.)

Norbit—Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji

Perhaps reflecting the much lower expectations of a return on investment than the Pirates franchise delivers, the suits who produced Norbit kept the makeup team to 20 by bringing in ringer Rick Baker and an Oscar nominee from last year for Click (?), Kazuhiro Tsuji. Indulging Eddie Murphy’s fetish for creating body suits and prosthetics to augment—actually overwhelm—his modest acting abilities, the Norbit team created a surprisingly toned fat woman (good for her!) and several other looks that screamed, “I’m not just doing this for a money.” Well, everyone but Baker and Tsuji. It’s good work in service of a very bad movie.

La Vie en Rose—Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald

It’s nice to see the Academy voters look past the disgusting snot-crust makeup adorning the nose of the very young child who would grow up to be Édith Piaf, because La Vie en Rose’s makeup team does an awful lot right. It only took eight people to apply a nose prosthetic to Best Actress nominee Marion Cotillard, and if Nicole’s experience is any indicator, this much better nose should propel her in a landslide to an Oscar. But it’s not just the nose. It’s the eyebrows, the hair, and most interesting of all, the stringy neck and chest of the aged Piaf that help Cotillard’s characterization seem more like a resurrection than a performance. Too bad the film’s in French. You know how hard it is for Academy voters to read subtitles through their surgically induced eye slits. Where are those A Clockwork Orange eyelid spreaders when you need them?!

Personally, I’d like to see the less flamboyant, but more film-serving makeup of Lavergne and Archibald win the day. However, in a move reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s Oscar for Lord of the Rings, I think that Neill and Samuel will win the day for their multi-film achievement. After all, legends are in this decade.