Spectator sport.

I guess I should head off the e-mails seeking my annual report from Cannes: It can be found this year at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Sadly, the crap economy has pretty much wiped out my freelance income since January, to the point where for the first time since 1997 I may have to go out and get myself an actual job. (Which is a bit problematic since I'm not exactly qualified to do anything else, except play poker.) One axe after another:

• Esquire: No longer runs my column every month—it now depends on whether they feel there's a subject that warrants the space. Of the last six issues (including two yet to hit newsstands), I appear in only three. That's a big hit.

• Nerve.com: Dismantled their Film Lounge and cut me back from one review per week to one review per month.

• Las Vegas Weekly: The editor who hired me resigned, and his replacement recently cut my fee in half and basically said Take it or leave it. Plus many of the reviews they assign me now run only 350 words (rather than 700-800) and pay only 1/4 of what I'd been getting.

Again, this has all happened since the beginning of the year. Not to subject you guys to a lot of whiny bitching and moaning (see also: my girlfriend of two years giving me the ol' heave-ho in March), but if you've been following my adventures as a film critic for a long while, as I know many of you have, be advised that that lengthy chapter of my life seems to be on the verge of closing.

In any case, back in March, when I had to make the decision (and when the prospective lineup looked way less appetizing than it's turned out to be, arrgh), Cannes just seemed like a bad idea, money-management-wise. Even at the height of my hotshottedness, nobody ever paid me to go there—the fee for my blog reports at Nerve covered less than half my expenses—and right now I simply can't justify spending well over $2000 to see a bunch of movies, however hotly anticipated, that I can catch four short months from now at Toronto (significantly cheaper) and/or the NYFF (completely free). So I'll be following the action from home along with most of the rest of you.

NOTE: While I was typing this post, I received this e-mail:

Hey Mike,

Are you in Cannes? If so, are you blogging about it somewhere? Your coverage is always the best; I particularly dug last year's experiment.

Thanks man. Yeah, this year I'm doing an even more radical experiment wherein I discover how I react to movies when I don't see them at all.

Thing is, I can't really complain too much. Michael Atkinson, who's had his own employment troubles of late, had a point when he noted last month that film criticism is essentially a part-time job for which a few lucky souls get paid a full-time wage. Even when I had a salaried staff position at Time Out New York, it was rare for me to put in more than maybe 15 hours of bona-fide work in any given week, including the time spent watching the films. To get away with that for more than ten years is pretty damn sweet, even if I have no 401K or anything to show for it.

That's Ed, any and all freelance writing opportunities—as well as any not-so-veiled propositions from smart, funny women into word nerds, so long as I'm fantasizing—will be very cheerfully considered.

Count me in.

"If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will—to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty—no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens."

—The writers of The Wire (Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon, William F. Zorzi, Jr.)

See Chicago 10, unless by chance you are a dolt.

I've been asked to say something about Lukas Moodysson's avant-garde curiosity Container, which just made a belated appearance on my 2006 top ten list. I hope to get to that this weekend, but in the meantime, do me a favor and ignore the passel of mixed and negative Chicago 10 reviews that just saw print, which merely regurgitate the wrongheaded reception the film received when it premiered at Sundance a year ago. I am so very weary of reading stuff like this, courtesy A.O. Scott:

Here’s a small quiz: Who did the Democrats nominate in 1968? What candidates opposed him? Which Republican did he face in the general election? Who won? Anyone who doesn’t know the answers will not learn them from Chicago 10, a movie about 1968 in which Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy are never mentioned, and Eugene McCarthy’s name is heard only in passing.

Apparently, director Brett Morgen made a terrible mistake in failing to sit down and draw up a list of every '68 factoid that a completely ignorant potential moviegoer might not already know, and then ensure that each one is addressed somewhere in the movie. Because of course the purpose of a documentary is to convey factual information to the viewer. Just like a book, only there are pictures! That move! Doesn't that make the expository nature of the enterprise so much more entertaining?

What makes Chicago 10 such an arresting experience is that Morgen truly doesn't give a damn about providing historical context. He's filmmaker enough to assume that you already know the pertinent details—and that if by some chance you don't know them, you shouldn't be learning them from a goddamn movie. Instead, he offers something far more valuable: a fully present-tense experience, one that comes as close as a 90-minute feature possibly can to conveying, for those of us too young to have been around or to remember (I was in diapers), what it must have felt like to watch it unfold. I made this argument at Sundance (scroll down a bit), but was heartened today to find Andrew O'Hehir's interview with Morgen at Salon, in which my new hero makes many of the same doc-based complaints I've been voicing for years:

For anybody who's younger than 50 or 52, it takes this moment of history that we've heard about but have a limited knowledge of, and allows the audience to do what film is uniquely suited to do—experience it. There are an insane amount of books and films and plays and radio shows about those events, and the one thing I thought was missing was something that allowed me to experience that chaos first-hand.

I see movies like No End in Sight, and I have a hard time even calling them movies. I think they're essays, and they're incredibly valuable documents. But I'm happy that film didn't win an Oscar, because I just didn't feel it was cinematic. If people voted for that film, they were voting for the politics of the film. Too often in nonfiction, most of us don't take advantage of the full breadth and width of what film has to offer. I'm trying to deviate from broadcast journalism. No End in Sight is something I could just as easily watch on television.

To which I can only say: Yes.

Go Our Own Way

For those who just can't get enough Skandie madness, the complete results, including individual ballots, are now available. (Top ten lists aren't quite ready yet, apparently, but everything else is there.) Now you know who to blame. My thanks once again to Mark Pittillo for doing the gruntwork.

When I created the Skandies back in 1995, there was no comparable survey being conducted anywhere. In fact, I felt comfortable stealing the Pazz & Jop template precisely because I saw no sign that the Voice ever intended to do anything similar in their Film section. Since then, of course, we've seen a proliferation of such year-end activity, to the point where there are now three major polls—indieWire, Voice/L.A. Weekly, and Film Comment—that use more or less the same pool of voters. (I take part in all three, and so do many others.) So it's worth examining the ways in which the Skandies, with its mix of professional critics and "amateur" but hardcore cinephiles, departs from whatever we might call conventional wisdom.

Here are the films that appeared in the top 20 of one or more of the above polls but failed to crack the Skandie list. The number to the left is the film's rank on our list; the parenthetical number to the right is points/# of votes.

24. The Host (50/6) [iW, VV/LAW]
27. Private Fears in Public Places (46/4) [FC]
33. Southland Tales (36/2) [iW]
34. Colossal Youth (35/3) [iW, VV/LAW, FC]
35. Michael Clayton (33/4) [VV/LAW, FC]
36. Lady Chatterley (33/2) [FC]
41. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (28/2) [iW, VV/LAW, FC]
51. Eastern Promises (17/3) [iW, VV/LAW, FC]
54. Away From Her (15/2) [VV/LAW, FC]
62. No End in Sight (12/1) [FC]
72. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (8/1) [FC]
No votes at all: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone [iW, FC]
Skandie-ineligible: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2008 NYC release); Killer of Sheep (too old)

Last year's two Tsai Ming-liang releases inspired the most blatant anomaly. Not only did Skandie voters completely ignore pro-critic fave I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, but we also declared The Wayward Cloud—widely regarded as a failure even by Tsai's biggest fans—to be one of the year's ten best. Granted, the fact that Wayward Cloud was never really commercially released may be a factor to some degree. (It had a week-long run at Anthology Film Archives in NYC, thus making it eligible for the surveys.) But I suspect this disparity speaks more to the difference in sensibility between the average Skandie voter and the average alt-weekly critic. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, despite numerous bleak moments, is ultimately hopeful and lyrical; The Wayward Cloud, by severe contrast, skirts forbiddingly close to nihilism. I'd like to think that my gang is more willing than most to see both of the above tones as value-neutral. (I'd also like to think we noticed that Tsai's mise-en-scène is far more robust and assured in Wayward Cloud, but there's dissension on that point even in our ranks.)

As for some of the other acclaimed movies above, who knows? We've liked us some Cronenberg of late—History of Violence finished 7th two years ago—but had no interest in Eastern Promises, apart from admiring Viggo. Schnabel's Cannes prize-winner got zero traction. Colossal Youth found only half a handful of ardent supporters among a group that's hardly averse to challenging, plotless foreign films. (See #5.) And I don't know what the hell happened with The Host, a movie everybody claimed to love but to which few allotted any significant points. I'm glad nobody suggested a wager about whether or not it would make the cut, 'cause I would have lost multiple shirts.

Then there's the fabled D'Angelo Effect, in which certain personal favorites of mine fare much better in the Skandies than they do pretty much anywhere else on the planet. I don't deny that this Effect exists—for one thing, I selected every one of the survey's voters, so the results are unquestionably skewed toward my taste (though this concordance seems to diminish with each passing year). But I think my influence ultimately has more to do with what voters see than it does with their opinions. The inclusion of Joshua (#15) and My Kid Could Paint That (#12) on my running top ten list ensured that a large percentage of Skandie participants would seek those films out, since they tend to trust that movies I flip for will at the very least be fairly interesting. Whereas I suspect that relatively few indieWire voters, for example, even saw them. The buzz just wasn't there out in the larger world—critics didn't feel like missing them constituted dereliction of duty. And my seal of approval is certainly no guarantee: 23 voters saw Kim Ki-duk's Time, which received a stellar 3.00 average rating, ranking it 20th for the year (on a list of 256 films), ahead of stuff like Jesse James/Robert Ford (2.95) and I'm Not There (2.92). But it only received three Best Picture votes, mine included. I can lead them to the Kool-Aid but I cannot make them drink in my opinion.

Skandies: #1

Picture: There Will Be Blood (347/27)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (397/26) [second nomination]
Actress: Carice van Houten, Black Book (312/21)
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood (519/30) [second nomination]
S. Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men (340/25)
S. Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone (355/25)
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (309/23)
Scene: Han River attack, The Host (185/15)

[Because I can't do subtitles, here's the English-dubbed version, which is only marginally distracting because it's almost entirely background chatter.]



HISTORY:

As director, Anderson previously placed 7th for Boogie Nights (1997), 4th for Magnolia (1999), and 8th for Punch-Drunk Love (2002). His only miss to date is his debut, Hard Eight. As screenwriter, he's fared just a bit less well, coming in 11th for both Boogie Nights and Magnolia and 15th for Punch-Drunk Love.

Day-Lewis won Supporting Actor (yes, Supporting Actor) in 2002 for Gangs of New York. Bardem placed 17th in the lead category for Before Night Falls in 2000. Van Houten and Ryan are both new.

Finally, congratulations to the two Beat MuseMalade participants who did, in fact, beat MuseMalade. The top scores:

Paul Clark: 88 points
Matt Noller: 79 points
Ryan "MuseMalade" Wu: 74 points

Mr. Clark predicted the Best Actor lineup with 100% accuracy, and was in fact the only contestant to correctly guess that Sam Rockwell would be among the nominees. Mr. Noller precisely nailed Best Picture, and was the only one to anticipate Grindhouse's unexpectedly high rank. Good job buds.

Skandies: #2

Picture: No Country for Old Men (303/23)
Director: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (323/24) [fourth nomination]
Actress: Nicole Kidman, Margot at the Wedding (279/22) [fourth nomination]
Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (238/19)
S. Actor: Kurt Russell, Grindhouse (228/20)
S. Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There (319/24) [fourth nomination]
Screenplay: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (289/26) [fourth nomination]
Scene: "I. DRINK. YOUR. MILKSHAKE!", There Will Be Blood (160/11)

[Edited slightly for reasons too tedious to get into, and I still can't get the aspect ratio right on this film.]



HISTORY:

With No Country for Old Men the Coen Brothers set a new record for most nominations in both Director and Screenplay, with four in each category. The three previous films: Fargo (#3 for both); O Brother, Where Art Thou? (#5 Director, #4 Screenplay); and The Man Who Wasn't There (#3 for both again). Thought they had this year's victories in the bag as recently as October, before PTA's film—shot in the same location, ironically—made its premiere.

More records! Kidman and Blanchett both tie Billy Bob Thornton at four career nominations. This is the third time Kidman has placed in the Best Actress runner-up slot—previously for Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Dogville (2004). She now has eight top 20 appearances in total, putting her second on that list (though well behind Philip Seymour Hoffman's 11). The others: 6th for Moulin Rouge (2001), 9th for The Others (also 2001), merely 9th for her Oscar-winning performance in The Hours (2002), 11th for Birth (2004), and 18th for Birthday Girl (2002). That she came in second this year, for a deliberately off-putting performance that generated few waves elsewhere, is a pretty good indication of our collective jones.

Blanchett now has a total of seven appearances, putting her fifth on the all-time list. (3rd is Kate Winslet, 4th is Edward Norton; I break ties based on how high they finished on average.) Her rundown:

1s. The Aviator (2004)
2. Elizabeth (1998)
5s. Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)
11. Heaven (2002)
16. Oscar and Lucinda (1997)
17s. Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Affleck we saw make his first appearance back at #7. (Good job August Voting Body putting him in the correct category for this performance.) Russell, meanwhile, has been on a serious roll of late, placing 20th in 2003 for Dark Blue (lead), 18th in 2004 for Miracle (also lead), and 11th in 2005 for Sky High.

Skandies: #3

Picture: Zodiac (173/15)
Director: David Fincher, Zodiac (242/23) [third nomination]
Actress: Tang Wei, Lust, Caution (200/16)
Actor: Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men (207/24)
S. Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War (198/15) [second nomination]
S. Actress: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Margot at the Wedding (240/19) [second nomination]
Screenplay: James Vanderbilt, Zodiac (193/20)
Scene: Darkness in the hotel hallway, No Country for Old Men (137/13)



HISTORY:

Fincher has finished 3rd once before, for 1999's Fight Club. He also placed 8th in 1997 for The Game and was a nominee for Se7en in the survey's inaugural year. Panic Room is his only whiff.

Hoffman, whose rundown appears in #12, extends his record to 11 total top 20 appearances and gets his highest finish ever, two notches higher than Capote, his only previous nomination. Leigh receives her first nod since placing 17th in the lead category for Washington Square (a film I'd completely forgotten existed until just now) in 1997; she was also a member of the class of '95, receiving a nomination for Georgia. Brolin first cracked the list last week for Grindhouse. Tang, of course, is new, as is Vanderbilt.