Festival Flashback: Week of 27 Feb.

Birdsong (Albert Serra, Spain): 61 [Toronto '08]
Even the positive reviews of Quixotic created an impression of something austere and humorless, so I was wholly unprepared for this droll stealth comedy, which for its first half plays something like a remake of Gerry starring The Three Fat Geriatric Stooges. (I spent almost half an hour stifling my chuckles, for fear of annoying the rest of the tiny VIP 3 screening room; eventually, as Serra's comedic intentions became unmistakable, others started openly laughing as well.) Second half is less directly engaging but still often quite lovely, and it's curious how much power Serra derives from his (I gather) trademark juxtaposition of the iconic and the mundane. As for the main question on the mind of certain parties: Peranson looks the part, which is all that's really required of him. "Acting" isn't an issue here.

(NOTE: This film has no real distribution; it's playing a single-week engagement at NYC's Anthology Film Archives.)

Pretty much all I have to say about the Oscars.

SKANDIES AVERAGE RATINGS FOR BEST PICTURE WINNERS, 1996–2008
(in descending order):

No Country for Old Men: 3.45
The Departed: 3.42
The English Patient: 3.27
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: 3.26
Titanic: 3.23
Shakespeare in Love: 3.21
Million Dollar Baby: 3.06
Gladiator: 3.04
American Beauty: 2.97
Chicago: 2.78
A Beautiful Mind: 2.73
Slumdog Millionaire: 2.42
Crash: 2.11

Skandiewrap.

First things first: This year's Swami Award goes to Mr. Charles Odell, who beat MuseMalade and a host of others in predicting the top five in each category before the countdown even kicked off. Not only did El Chuck name Best Picture #1-3 spot-on and correctly guess the winner in four other categories, but he utterly nailed the incredibly difficult Best Scene lineup. Here are his five predictions, with their actual finish in parentheses:

01. Sunrise, Silent Light (#1)
02. Dinner party, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (#4)
03. The pool, Let the Right One In (#2)
04. Rehearsal dinner (toasts), Rachel Getting Married (#6)
05. The pencil trick, The Dark Knight (#7)

All five wound up in the top seven. That is by god remarkable given the sheer number of possibilities. He did miss the diagram scene from Woman on the Beach, but then who among us did not. (A: Nobody.)

In second place for the second consecutive year, with 65 points to Odell's 71, was Matt Noller, who had a touching amount of faith in our hard-on for the criminally overlooked (why did I give it only five points?) The Duchess of Langeais. MuseMalade himself once again comes in third (64 points), in large part because he somehow thought Philip Seymour Hoffman would take Best Actor even though Rourke was pretty much a gimme, correctly guessed by literally everyone else.

As for those results. Much grumbling was heard about the less-than-stellar quality of Cinema 2008, so I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that our collective favorite turned out to be an '07 leftover, eligible this year instead of last only because—to the annoyance of the survey's still-living namesake—I doggedly choose to stick to NYC commercial release as my sole criterion. I don't know whether we can really call 432's victory a vote of no confidence, but certainly there was no film this year that inspired the sort of passionate unanimity that e.g. the PTA and Coen movies did last year. (Though I still think that Silent Light, which received the highest average rating of any film this year and handily won Best Director, might well have prevailed had it only been seen by a few more people.) In any case, finding huge studio blockbusters like WALL•E and The Dark Knight mingling up at the top with semi-punishing art films about illegal Romanian abortions and adulterous German-Mexican Mennonites makes my heart sing. Elsewhere, we acknowledged popular favorites (Mickey Rourke, Heath Ledger) when warranted, but also honored the underappreciated (Anamaria Marinca, Rosemarie DeWitt) and the almost criminally misunderstood (Burn After Reading's deceptively stoopid screenplay). That degree of catholicism is precisely what I was hoping to achieve when I inaugurated this survey 13 amazingly long years ago.

As usual, I'm also quite proud of my crew for totally ignoring a bunch of mediocre films that were inexplicably met with raves elsewhere, including all of this year's lame Oscar nominees. Not for us the brutal-yet-fanciful exoticism of Slumdog Millionaire or the refried Gumpisms of Benjamin Button or the rote martrydom of Milk. Even certain highbrow faves—most notably Film Comment survey champ Wendy and Lucy and NSFC winner Waltz With Bashir—were met (correctly imo) with general indifference. Say what you will about our taste; we are beholden to no one.

Back when I started the survey, I remember looking forward to the time, a decade or so later (i.e. now), when there'd be tons of accumulated data to wade through. In particular, I was excited about the prospect of being able to compare how various films from major directors had been received over the years. Granted, that process isn't exactly definitive—the AVB has mutated over the years and even the diehards tend to be stingier with their star ratings than they were back in the mid-'90s. But perhaps my favorite task after receiving the averages is updating my Directors' Gallery, plugging this year's films into various post-'94 oeuvres. Here are the entries that saw additions this year—every filmmaker who's ever placed in the Director top 20. 2008 films are in bold. Numbers in parentheses indicate how the film placed in Best Picture that year, if applicable; if the film title is in parentheses that means it received fewer than 10 votes and hence the result is a bit less meaningful.

Woody Allen

Everyone Says I Love You: 3.09
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (19): 2.98
Match Point (13): 2.93
Sweet and Lowdown: 2.63
Deconstructing Harry: 2.61
Cassandra's Dream: 2.60
Small Time Crooks: 2.37
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion: 2.33
Scoop: 2.28
Anything Else: 2.13
Hollywood Ending: 2.13
Celebrity: 2.04
Melinda and Melinda: 2.00

Darren Aronofsky

The Wrestler (13): 3.02
Requiem for a Dream (15): 2.73
[Pi]: 2.65
The Fountain: 2.21

Olivier Assayas

Irma Vep (5): 3.48
Late August, Early September: 2.88
Les Destinées: 2.79
Clean: 2.78
demonlover: 2.45
Boarding Gate: 2.35

Danny Boyle

Trainspotting (11): 3.19
Millions: 2.93
28 Days Later: 2.90
Sunshine: 2.74
Slumdog Millionaire: 2.42
(A Life Less Ordinary): 2.22
The Beach: 2.08

Catherine Breillat

The Last Mistress: 2.88
Fat Girl: 2.85
Sex Is Comedy: 2.66
Romance: 2.00
Anatomy of Hell: 1.77

Laurent Cantet

Time Out (5): 3.30
The Class: 3.13
(Human Resources): 2.67
Heading South: 2.22

Stephen Chow

Kung Fu Hustle (11): 3.09
CJ7: 2.46

Joel [& Ethan] Coen

No Country for Old Men (2): 3.45
Fargo (6): 3.31
The Man Who Wasn’t There (5): 3.28
The Big Lebowski (12): 3.03
Burn After Reading (11): 3.01
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (4): 2.94
Intolerable Cruelty: 2.72
The Ladykillers: 2.24

Terence Davies

The House of Mirth (7): 3.29
(The Neon Bible): 2.83
Of Time and the City: 2.40

Jonathan Demme

Rachel Getting Married (4): 3.28
Neil Young: Heart of Gold: 2.94
(Storefront Hitchcock): 2.92
The Manchurian Candidate : 2.70
(Man From Plains): 2.67
Beloved: 2.64
The Truth About Charlie: 2.48
(The Agronomist): 2.39

Guillermo del Toro

Pan's Labyrinth (8): 2.95
The Devil's Backbone: 2.66
Blade II: 2.63
Hellboy II: The Golden Army: 2.53
Hellboy: 2.33
Mimic: 2.06

Arnaud Desplechin

Kings & Queen (15): 3.03
A Christmas Tale (10): 3.00
Esther Kahn: 2.98
(My Sex Life, or How I Got Into an Argument): 2.60

Clint Eastwood

Million Dollar Baby (9): 3.06
Letters From Iwo Jima: 2.82
Mystic River: 2.81
Changeling: 2.70
Space Cowboys: 2.63
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: 2.57
Flags of Our Fathers: 2.52
Gran Torino: 2.46
Blood Work: 2.35
Absolute Power: 2.32
True Crime: 2.31

David Fincher

Zodiac (3): 3.27
Fight Club (3): 3.19
The Game (9): 2.95
Panic Room: 2.79
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: 2.42

Michel Gondry

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2): 3.28
Dave Chappelle's Block Party (19): 3.02
Be Kind Rewind: 2.59
The Science of Sleep: 2.53
Human Nature: 2.40

David Gordon Green

George Washington: 3.05
All the Real Girls (15): 2.93
Pineapple Express: 2.71
Undertow: 2.56
Snow Angels: 2.56

Michael Haneke

Caché (Hidden) (5): 3.21
Code Unknown (16): 3.15
Funny Games [1997] (16): 2.96
The Piano Teacher: 2.83
Funny Games [2008] (20): 2.83
Time of the Wolf: 2.79

Werner Herzog

Grizzly Man (1): 3.40
(Little Dieter Needs to Fly): 3.10
Encounters at the End of the World: 3.09
My Best Fiend: 2.85
(The White Diamond): 2.83
Rescue Dawn : 2.73
(Wheel of Time): 2.57
(The Wild Blue Yonder): 2.25
Invincible: N/A (fewer than 5 votes)

Hong Sang-soo

Woman on the Beach (13): 3.10
Woman Is the Future of Man: 2.79

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Flight of the Red Balloon (15): 3.04
Three Times: 2.85
Millennium Mambo: 2.83
Café Lumière: 2.55

Jia Zhang-ke

The World: 2.89
Still Life (18): 2.88
Unknown Pleasures: 2.45

Mathieu Kassovitz (making what for him amounts to a comeback this year)

Hate (18): 3.14
Babylon A.D.: 2.10
The Crimson Rivers: 2.06
(Gothika): 1.70

Neil LaBute

In the Company of Men (2): 3.57
Possession: 2.78
Your Friends & Neighbors: 2.62
Lakeview Terrace: 2.43
Nurse Betty: 2.31
The Shape of Things: 2.27
The Wicker Man: 1.79

Spike Lee

25th Hour (1): 3.42
Get on the Bus: 3.29
(4 Little Girls): 3.14
Inside Man (16): 2.99
The Original Kings of Comedy: 2.73
He Got Game: 2.59
Summer of Sam: 2.57
(Girl 6): 2.28
Bamboozled: 2.13
Miracle at St. Anna: 2.00
She Hate Me: 1.32
Jim Brown: All American: N/A (fewer than 5 votes)

Mike Leigh

Secrets & Lies (2): 3.56
Vera Drake (6): 3.26
Topsy-Turvy (9): 3.18
All or Nothing: 3.02
Happy-Go-Lucky (12): 2.97
Career Girls: 2.83

[See, this is why this stuff is fascinating to me. Happy-Go-Lucky placed 12th and yet actually got a slightly lower average rating than All or Nothing, which didn't make the top 20 at all. Clearly the former is far more divisive.]

Baz Luhrmann

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet: 2.95
Moulin Rouge (9): 2.84
Australia: 2.17

Guy Maddin

My Winnipeg (8): 3.22
Cowards Bend the Knee: 3.11
The Saddest Music in the World: 3.01
Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary: 2.93
Brand Upon the Brain!: 2.90

David Mamet

The Winslow Boy (14): 3.07
The Spanish Prisoner: 3.02
State and Main (17): 2.95
Spartan: 2.82
Redbelt: 2.64
Heist: 2.47

Fernando Meirelles

City of God: 2.98
The Constant Gardener: 2.52
Blindness: 1.79

Sam Mendes

American Beauty (16): 2.97
Road to Perdition: 2.82
Revolutionary Road: 2.65
Jarhead: 2.44

Takashi Miike

Audition (6): 3.22
Dead or Alive: 2.79
Ichi the Killer : 2.74
The Happiness of the Katakuris : 2.73
Gozu: 2.61
The City of Lost Souls: 2.56
Three…Extremes: 2.47
Sukiyaki Western Django: 2.32
The Great Yokai War: 2.25
(One Missed Call): 2.20
(DOA: Final): 2.17

Frank Miller

Frank Miller's Sin City (10): 2.74
The Spirit: N/A (fewer than 5 votes)

Errol Morris

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (4): 3.42
The Fog of War (11): 3.24
Mr. Death: 3.10
Standard Operating Procedure: 2.98

Christopher Nolan

The Prestige (2): 3.40
Memento (3): 3.31
The Dark Knight (5): 3.17
Insomnia: 2.92
Batman Begins (19): 2.81
(Following): 2.28

Kelly Reichardt

Old Joy (5): 3.17
Wendy and Lucy: 2.98

Carlos Reygadas

Silent Light (3): 3.41
Battle in Heaven: 2.47
Japón: 2.35

Jacques Rivette

The Duchess of Langeais: 3.20
Va savoir: 2.79
(Secret défense): 2.17

Paul Schrader

Affliction (17): 2.94
Auto Focus: 2.32
(The Walker): 2.19
(Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist): 1.86
Touch: N/A (fewer than 5 votes)
Adam Resurrected: N/A (fewer than 5 votes)

Martin Scorsese

The Departed (1): 3.42
Kundun (7): 3.22
Gangs of New York (9): 3.01
The Aviator: 2.96
Bringing Out the Dead: 2.52
Shine a Light: 2.50

Ridley Scott

Gladiator (20): 3.04
Black Hawk Down (20): 2.78
Matchstick Men: 2.78
American Gangster: 2.50
Body of Lies: 2.50
G.I. Jane: 2.42
Kingdom of Heaven: 2.33
(White Squall): 2.22
Hannibal: 1.94
(A Good Year): 1.93

Steven Soderbergh

Out of Sight (1): 3.37
Traffic (5): 3.24
Erin Brockovich: 3.14
The Limey: 2.99
(Gray’s Anatomy): 2.94
Ocean’s Eleven: 2.93
Solaris: 2.86
Schizopolis: 2.70
Bubble: 2.66
The Good German: 2.66
Full Frontal: 2.63
Ocean’s Twelve: 2.52
Ocean's Thirteen: 2.52
Che: 2.35
Eros: 2.15 [for entire film]

Steven Spielberg

Saving Private Ryan (8): 3.27
Minority Report: 2.92
AI (7): 2.91
Munich (14): 2.88
Amistad: 2.83
War of the Worlds: 2.82
Catch Me if You Can: 2.79
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: 2.39
The Lost World: Jurassic Park: 2.33
The Terminal : 2.10

Andrew Stanton

WALL•E (2): 3.26
Finding Nemo (13): 3.06

Johnnie To

Exiled (18): 2.97
Mad Detective: 2.95
Election: 2.79
Fulltime Killer: 2.74
Election 2: 2.73
(Breaking News): 2.50
(Throwdown): 2.33

Gus Van Sant

Paranoid Park (6): 3.15
Gerry (4): 2.93
Good Will Hunting: 2.84
Milk: 2.83
Last Days: 2.79
Elephant: 2.40
Psycho: 2.11
Finding Forrester: 2.10

The Wachowski Brothers

Bound (16): 3.29
The Matrix: 2.96
Speed Racer: 2.57
The Matrix Reloaded: 2.29
The Matrix Revolutions: 2.21

Wong Kar-wai

In the Mood for Love (1): 3.45
Chung King Express (5): 3.33
2046 (8): 3.17
Happy Together: 2.81
(Ashes of Time): 2.70
My Blueberry Nights: 2.45
Eros 2.15 [for entire film]

Until next year...

Skandies: #1

Best Picture: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (241/20)

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Best Director: Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light (274/16)
Skandie history: None.

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Best Actress: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (356/24)
Skandie history: None.

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Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (326/23)
Skandie history: #2 in Supporting, Frank Miller's Sin City (2005)

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Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (430/28)
Skandie history: 1st in Lead, Brokeback Mountain (2005); 12th in Supporting, Lords of Dogtown (2005)

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Best Supporting Actress: Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (271/19)
Skandie history: None.

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Best Screenplay: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Burn After Reading (318/20)
Skandie history: 3rd for Fargo (1996), 7th for The Big Lebowski (1998), 4th for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 3rd for The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), 2nd for No Country for Old Men (2007).

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Best Scene: Sunrise, Silent Light (149/11)
[Unfortunately, this is completely unwatchable on low-res video. Most of it is just a bunch of indistinct pixels. If you haven't already seen it on a big screen, you'll only shrug.]

Complete results available here. Thanks to all voters, and especially to Mark Pittillo for programming the automated ballot and maintaining the website. Brief post-mortem (plus the winner of Beat MuseMalade; someone did again) coming over the weekend.

Skandies: #2

Picture: WALL•E (216/18)
Director: Andrew Stanton, WALL•E (228/18)
Actress: Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky (308/25)
Actor: Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man (269/22)
S. Actor: Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading (223/20)
S. Actress: Hafsia Herzi, The Secret of the Grain (215/11)
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York (243/13)
Scene: The pool, Let the Right One In (142/12)



[WARNING: Gore.]

HISTORY:

Stanton did not place for Finding Nemo, though the film itself finished 13th.

In addition to being nominated for Twelve Monkeys in 1995 (under different rules), Pitt previously finished 10th in the lead category for Fight Club (1999). Downey Jr. was covered when he placed at #8 in Supporting for Tropic Thunder. Hawkins and Herzi are new.

Kaufman finally fails to take home the trophy, having won for Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation. (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Skandies: #3

Picture: Silent Light (214/13)*
Director: Cristian Mungiu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (201/16)
Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married (307/23)
Actor: Sean Penn, Milk (235/22)
S. Actor: Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky (206/18)
S. Actress: Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler (171/20)
Screenplay: Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan, The Dark Knight (222/17)
Scene: Elles alfresco, In the City of Sylvia (119/6)





[This scene skates right up to the limit of what I consider acceptable lengthwise at nearly 18 minutes—it's fully 25% of the entire short feature—but it's such an extraordinary piece of filmmaking that I couldn't bring myself to deem it ineligible. Nor could I edit a shorter version that didn't seem to ruin its integrity, so I wound up creating two files. (The whole film is already available on YouTube, but really badly squashed, and the compositions are beyond crucial.) Minimal dialogue is in French and burnt-in subtitles are in Spanish, but I assure you, it couldn't matter less. If I had to vote for my single favorite scene of the past ten years, this would very likely be my choice.]

HISTORY:

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is Mungiu's first eligible film.

Penn, in addition to being nominated (under different rules) for Dead Man Walking in 1995, has also placed 19th for Hurlyburly (1998), 12th for Sweet and Lowdown (1999), 17th for 21 Grams (2003), and 19th—yes, only 19th; good job AVB—for Mystic River (also 2003). Tomei gets her third nod, having finished 5th in 2001 for In the Bedroom and 17th last year for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Hathaway and Marsan are new.

C. Nolan has won Screenplay twice, in 2001 for Memento and in 2006 (with J. Nolan) for The Prestige. He also placed 15th in 2005 for Batman Begins.


* Here I must yet again reiterate [sic] my plea for members of the August Voting Body to refrain from strategic point allocation. The #2 film received 216 points, which means that Silent Light finished 3rd instead of 2nd solely because a voter who shall remain nameless, and who thought Reygadas' film the best of the year, chose to give twice as many points to the film at #5 on his/her list, simply because—by his/her own admission—(s)he felt the other film needed more help. As it happens, the other film in question still failed to place in the top 20 (and in fact received no other votes), so the strategy wasn't even effective. But more to the point, I specifically ask you guys not to do this in the annual instructions. So please don't, okay?

Skandies: #4

Picture: Rachel Getting Married (179/16)
Director: Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married (174/16)
Actress: Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy (225/20)
Actor: Guillaume Depardieu, The Duchess of Langeais (168/14)
S. Actor: Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road (153/15)
S. Actress: Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (143/11)
Screenplay: Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg (183/18)
Scene: Dinner party, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (115/11)



[This is sort of a stunt that is only remotely interesting in context; if you haven't seen the film, I wouldn't bother watching. It's about seven minutes of a woman in great emotional distress trapped in a rising sea of banal chitchat.]

HISTORY:

First, erratum: When Darren Aronfosky was cited earlier in Best Director, I said he had one previous appearance, for Requiem for a Dream. I didn't have a master list for Director or Screenplay (now I do) and didn't even bother to check to see whether he'd made the cut for The Fountain two years ago, since that seemed patently absurd. But in fact he did: #18.

Though Demme has made eight features during the Skandie era, he has never before placed.

Williams finished 2nd in Supporting for Brokeback Mountain in 2005*. Cruz finished 3rd in the lead category for Volver in 2006. Shannon was covered in #17 when he placed for Shotgun Stories. Depardieu gets his first and most likely final nod, R.I.P.

Maddin's screenplay for The Saddest Music in the World came in at #15 in 2004.


* Note that she received 20 votes, so it's not as if Wendy and Lucy's absence from the Picture list has anything to do with the film being underseen. Despite having loved Old Joy to pieces [#5], we just were not that impressed by this one. Good job us.

Skandies: #5

Picture: The Dark Knight (176/16)
Director: Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park (165/17)
Actress: Juliette Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon (168/15)
Actor: Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (145/16)
S. Actor: John Malkovich, Burn After Reading (135/14)
S. Actress: Laura Vasiliu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (127/13)
Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, In Bruges (169/11)
Scene: The diagram, Woman on the Beach (83/8)



[If you guys knew how much fucking time I put in getting the annotation "subtitles" timed just right... Also some of these are placed far enough on the right of the frame that they cut off on this narrow blog template, so you might want to watch it here.]

HISTORY: Van Sant previously placed 4th for Gerry (2003), 18th for Elephant (also 2003), and 15th for Last Days (2005).

Binoche gets her fourth nod, having finished 6th in Supporting for The English Patient* (1996), 13th in Supporting for Code Unknown (2001), and 11th for Caché (Hidden) (2005). In addition to winning Supporting Actor last year for No Country for Old Men, Bardem also placed 17th in 2000 for Before Night Falls. Malkovich makes his first appearance since he won Supporting Actor, needless to say for Being John Malkovich in 1999. Vasiliu is new.

In Bruges is McDonagh's first feature.


* All in all this was a strong year for English Patient leads, what with Binoche, Fiennes and Scott Thomas all placing. Naveen Andrews will have to settle for having nothing whatsoever to do so far this year on Lost.

Skandies: The "nominees"

Not all that much suspense about who/what remains, so let's answer potential questions about near-misses and no-chances here, as well as give the top picks a little additional airtime. (Sorry it's all text, incidentally—I have virtually no HTML skills and invariably mangle any attempt to combine words and images, except in the most basic just-one-image-up-at-the-top kind of way.)

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Best Picture

• The Dark Knight
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• Rachel Getting Married
• Silent Light
• WALL•E

Overlap with Oscar nominees: None
Notable films that failed to make the top 20: The Duchess of Langeais (#21), Ballast (#22), Milk (#23), The Edge of Heaven (#27), Wendy and Lucy (#28), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (#29), Frost/Nixon (#35), Waltz With Bashir (#38), Slumdog Millionaire (#71), The Reader (no votes)

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Best Director

• Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married
• Cristian Mungiu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light
• Andrew Stanton, WALL•E
• Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park

Previous "nominations": Only Van Sant, who placed 4th for Gerry in 2003.
Overlap with Oscar nominees: None, though they nominated Van Sant for Milk.
Notable directors who failed to make the top 20: Tomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In (#21); James Marsh, Man on Wire (#26); David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (#27); Gus Van Sant, Milk (#29); Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire (#43); Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon (#50); Stephen Daldry, The Reader (no votes)

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Best Actress

• Juliette Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon
• Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
• Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
• Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy

Previous "nominations": Only Williams, who placed 2nd in Supporting for Brokeback Mountain in 2005.
Overlap with Oscar nominees: Hathaway
Notable actresses who failed to make the top 20: Angelina Jolie, Changeling (#26); Kate Winslet, The Reader (#77 in Supporting)

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Best Actor

• Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• Guillaume Depardieu, The Duchess of Langeais
• Robert Downey, Jr., Iron Man
• Sean Penn, Milk
• Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Previous "nominations": Almost everyone. Bardem won Supporting just last year for No Country for Old Men, while Rourke took 2nd in the same category for Frank Miller's Sin City in 2005. Penn gets his first nomination since the survey's inaugural year (1995), when he placed for Dead Man Walking. And Downey, in a truly remarkable achievement, finishes in the top five for the third time in four years, having placed 3rd both in 2005 for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and in 2006 (Supporting) for A Scanner Darkly. Plus he just missed last year for Zodiac, coming in 6th in Supporting. Amazing.
Overlap with Oscar nominees: Penn, Rourke
Notable actors who failed to make the top 20: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino (#27); Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (#38)

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Best Supporting Actor

• Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
• John Malkovich, Burn After Reading
• Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky
• Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading
• Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Previous "nominations": Like Sean Penn, Brad Pitt gets his first nomination since Year One, when he made the cut for Twelve Monkeys. Ledger and Malkovich, meanwhile, are both past Skandie winners, the former for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 (in Lead, of course) and the latter for Being Guess Who in 1999.
Overlap with Oscar nominees: Ledger, Shannon
Notable actors who failed to make the top 20: None, really.

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Best Supporting Actress

• Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
• Hafsia Herzi, The Secret of the Grain
• Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
• Laura Vasiliu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Previous "nominations": Cruz placed 3rd in the lead category two years ago for Volver; Tomei finished 5th in 2001 for In the Bedroom.
Overlap with Oscar nominees: Cruz, Tomei
Notable actresses who failed to make the top 20: Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (#26); Amy Adams, Doubt (#32)

---

Best Screenplay

• Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Burn After Reading
• Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York
• Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg
• Martin McDonagh, In Bruges
• Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan, The Dark Knight

Previous "nominations": The three all-time most nominated writers in this category are all represented this year, as it happens. The Coens get a record fifth nod, having previously placed 3rd for Fargo (1996, back when there were two categories), 4th for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 3rd for The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and 2nd last year for No Country for Old Men. Kaufman has three past nominations and three wins: 1st for Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation. (2002) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Chris Nolan has two past nominations and two wins: 1st for Memento (2001) and The Prestige (2006). (J. Nolan shared the latter and so gets his own second nod.) Between them, Kaufman and Nolan have won this category in five of the past ten years. Or is it six...?
Overlap with Oscar nominees: McDonagh, oddly enough.
Notable screenwriters who failed to make the top 20: Dustin Lance Black, Milk (#24); Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon (#27); Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park (also #27); Michael Haneke, Funny Games (#41); Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire (#43); Courtney Hunt, Frozen River (#72); Nick Schenk, Gran Torino (also #72); José Luis Guerin, In the City of Sylvia (no votes); David Hare, The Reader (no votes); Hou Hsiao Hsien and François Margolin, Flight of the Red Balloon (no votes); Jia Zhang-ke, Still Life (no votes); Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (no votes)

---

Best Scene

Nah, I gotta save something as a surprise.

---

Skandies: #6

Picture: Paranoid Park (146/14)
Director: Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg (164/20)
Actress: Jeanne Balibar, The Duchess of Langeais (153/16)
Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Synecdoche, New York (138/12)
S. Actor: Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married (130/13)
S. Actress: Samantha Morton, Synecdoche, New York (127/10)
Screenplay: Arnaud Desplechin & Emmanuel Bourdieu, A Christmas Tale (165/14)
Scene: Rehearsal dinner (toasts), Rachel Getting Married (70/6)



[The entire scene runs about 15 minutes, which is too long for YouTube; this is the half that seems essential. And as a bonus, below is scene #19, which I couldn't put up at the time because no torrent of Rachel had yet turned up. Again, this is really just a very tender moment that a couple voters responded to strongly, not really a scene as I try to define it. Also the first ten seconds or so are screwed up.]



HISTORY: Maddin placed 15th in 2003 for Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary.

Morton gets her sixth nod, though her first in five years. She previously placed 6th in Supporting for Sweet and Lowdown (1999), 2nd in Supporting for Jesus' Son (2000), 4th in Lead for Morvern Callar (2002), 5th in Supporting for Minority Report (also 2002), and 16th in Lead for In America (2003). Balibar finished 18th in 2001 for another Rivette joint, Va savoir. Hoffman further extends his all-time Skandie record with his 13th career appearance in the top 20. (See #11 for details.) Irwin is new.

Desplechin's screenplay for Kings & Queen placed 8th in 2005. That seems to be the only one of his recent films that Bourdieu, who has never before placed, didn't collaborate on.

Skandies: #7

Picture: Synecdoche, New York (146/10)
Director: Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight (159/15)
Actress: Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long (118/10)
Actor: Mathieu Amalric, A Christmas Tale (108/10)
S. Actor: Vlad Ivanov, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (126/12)
S. Actress: Hanna Schygulla, The Edge of Heaven (109/9)
Screenplay: Cristian Mungiu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (148/17)
Scene: The pencil trick, The Dark Knight (66/6)



HISTORY:

Nolan previously placed 5th for Memento (2001) and 4th for The Prestige (2006). He didn't make the cut for Batman Begins, though the film itself did.

Scott Thomas gets her first nod since a double appearance in 1996, when she finished 6th for The English Patient and 12th in Supporting for Angels and Insects. Amalric previously placed twice in 2005, 8th for Kings & Queen and 16th in Supporting for Munich. Ivanov and the legendary Ms. Schygulla are new.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is Mungiu's first eligible film.

Skandies: #8

Picture: My Winnipeg (118/14)
Director: José Luis Guerin, In the City of Sylvia (141/10)
Actress: Anna Faris, The House Bunny (116/10)
Actor: Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon (107/8)
S. Actor: Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder (123/12)
S. Actress: Viola Davis, Doubt (103/12)
Screenplay: Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, WALL•E (143/15)
Scene: First day at the deli counter, The Wrestler (65/6)


sk8 from Mike D'Angelo on Vimeo.

[Procedural note: I received separate votes for Ram actually serving customers and Ram walking out to the deli to the sound of imaginary crowd noise. After a second viewing revealed that these are contiguous, I decided they're essentially the same scene (since the latter is really more of a moment introducing the scene) and added them all together. I did not, however and of course, add votes—and there were a few—for Ram's last day at the deli counter.]

HISTORY:

Guerin (or is it Luis Guerin? I can never get that right) gets the nod for his first eligible film.

Downey has now placed for four consecutive years. He previously finished 10th for Two Girls and a Guy (1998), 3rd for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), 3rd in Supporting for A Scanner Darkly (2006), and 6th in Supporting for Zodiac (2007). Faris and Langella kick off possible streaks of their own, having placed in their respective categories last year—the former at 6th for [Smiley Face], the latter at 11th for Starting Out in the Evening. Davis is new.

Stanton, who in the past has generally been part of a stable of Pixar scribes, has previously finished 3rd for Toy Story 2 (1999), 14th for Monsters, Inc. (2001), and 11th for Finding Nemo (2003). Reardon is new.

Festival Flashback: Week of 13 Feb.

First capsule is actually an e-mail I wrote to a friend immediately after the screening.

Two Lovers (James Gray, USA): 70. [Premiered at Cannes '08, seen by me in NYC.]
It's a strange, disorienting film—much stranger than any of the Cannes reviews seem to suggest. Performances and mise-en-scène are both oddly stunted. Without being remotely "weird," it looks like almost nothing else being made right now. Kind of like Bubble if Bubble had been warm instead of cool—don't know if that makes any sense. Paltrow and Shaw both throw themselves into that same exposed-nerve realm we've seen Joaquin Phoenix in before, and Phoenix doubles down on it. Everyone seems to be maybe ten years old. But the plot is very Late Marriage, to the point of having that same Israeli actor, Moni Moshonov, in the role of the dad. (It can't be coincidence.) I found it really hypnotic, but I can see why it comes across to many as just plain inept. Frogs vindicated imo.

Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, Italy): 54. [Premiered at Cannes '08, seen by me in NYC pre-Toronto.]
Remarkably similar to The Wire in its method, slowly and patiently assembling a vast, dizzying mosaic that examines the Camorra's effect on every aspect of Neapolitan life, as seen from every rung on the region's socioeconomic ladder. Thing is, though, The Wire, for all its undeniable brilliance, took a good five or six episodes just to get rolling in its first season, and that's twice as much time as Garrone has to work with here. Consequently, a lot of this material feels sketchy, skeletal, undernourished; of the five individual stories that eventually emerge, only one—the proud tailor who sells out to the Chinese—manages to transcend its schematic function and grab you on a visceral level, thanks largely to that actor's exceptional performance. Furthermore, Garrone's stubborn refusal to contextualize anything, while theoretically admirable, results in serious confusion for the determined tabula rasa viewer (viz. moi), who won't have the slightest clue what the hell is going on with these apparent turf wars (I had to look it up on Wikipedia afterwards), and who may not even fully understand, until the expository closing titles, how the haute-couture and waste-management strands are related to all the criminal activity, since we're never explicitly told that these are Camorra-backed businesses. Plenty of memorable images, including a housing project that rivals the one in Import Export for frightening dilapidation, but the entomological approach and general absence of humanity—no Bunk or Bubbles here—makes Gomorrah something of a grim slog. Really, the title and the first few minutes tell you everything you'll ever know.

Skandies: #9

Picture: In the City of Sylvia (108/10)
Director: Arnaud Desplechin, A Christmas Tale (127/13)
Actress: Asia Argento, The Last Mistress (107/12)
Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Redbelt (101/8)
S. Actor: Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges (123/11)
S. Actress: Olivia Thirlby, Snow Angels (98/10)
Screenplay: Jenny Lumet, Rachel Getting Married (120/13)
Scene: Bathing the kids, Silent Light (60/6)



[Found this looking spectacular on YouTube—for better results go the page and watch it in high quality. I kinda violated my own rules for this category by voting for this, since I wouldn't show it at our annual clip party and can't imagine it plays well out of context, but oh well.]

HISTORY:

Desplechin placed 17th in 2005 for Kings & Queen.

Ejiofor gets his third nod and his highest placement yet, having previously finished 14th for Dirty Pretty Things (2003) and 17th in Supporting for Serenity (2005). Gleeson likewise has two previous top 20 appearances: 11th in Lead for The General (1998) and 15th in Supporting for 28 Days Later (2003). Thirlby is new (though this performance seems like it was ten years ago to me, as I saw Snow Angels a good six months before Juno), and Ms. Argento has never before made the cut—perhaps because she can only posture, not act, but never mind.

Rachel Getting Married is Lumet's first produced screenplay.

Skandies: #10

Picture: A Christmas Tale (106/9)
Director: Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York (108/7)
Actress: Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road (102/11)
Actor: Josh Brolin, W. (91/7)
S. Actor: Russell Brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (114/13)
S. Actress: Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (96/10)
Screenplay: Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (106/11)
Scene: Deranged penguin, Encounters at the End of the World (59/6)



HISTORY:

Kaufman, a three-time (at least) Skandie winner for Screenplay, gets a nod for his directorial debut.

Winslet makes her 9th appearance in the top 20, placing her second behind Philip Seymour Hoffman on the all-time list. (She'd been tied with Nicole Kidman at eight.) Her roster:

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
8. Titanic (1997)
9. Jude (1996)
10s. Quills (2000)
10. Revolutionary Road (2008)
12. Little Children (2006)
13. Holy Smoke (1999)
16s. Hamlet (1996)
17. Hideous Kinky (1999)

Brolin gets two nods for the second consecutive year; check yesterday's post for the other details. Brand and Hall are new—and, memo to the AVB, Hall was unquestionably one of the leads in that film, her billing notwithstanding.

Screenplaywise, the Woodman previously placed 20th for Deconstructing Harry (1997) and 5th for Match Point (2005).

Skandies: #11

Picture: Burn After Reading (94/10)
Director: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Flight of the Red Balloon (105/10)
Actress: Lina Leandersson, Let the Right One In (92/10)
Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt (85/9)
S. Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk (82/10)
S. Actress: Emmanuelle Devos, A Christmas Tale (84/10)
Screenplay: Hong Sang-soo, Woman on the Beach (101/9)
Scene: Nurse Joker, The Dark Knight (54/5)



[Complete with silhouettes of folks taking/leaving their seats at the theater; again, you've all seen this so I'm not gonna spend the time creating a clip from scratch. There's a better looking, edited-to-remove-parallel-action, non-embeddable version here.]

HISTORY:

With this, the Coens now hold the solo Skandie record for most films to make the top 20, with six. They had previously been tied with Lars von Trier at five. In third place, with four films each, are (in order of how high their films collectively ranked) Paul Thomas Anderson (worst finish #8!), Christopher Nolan (including The Dark Knight, which I won't pretend is not forthcoming), Mike Leigh, David Lynch (who is 4 for 4), Richard Linklater, and Michael Haneke.

Though this is the first time Hou has landed one of his films in the top 20, he's placed twice before as a director, finishing 20th for Millennium Mambo (2003) and 10th—one pip higher than this year!—for Three Times (2006).

Hoffman further extends his record as the most honored actor in Skandie history with this, his 12th top 20 appearance. (Nobody else has more than nine.) Here we go:

3s. Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
5. Capote (2005)
6s. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
6s. Almost Famous (2000)
10s. Magnolia (1999)
10s. 25th Hour (2002)
11. Doubt (2008)
12. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
12s. State and Main (2000)
15s. Happiness (1998)
15. Owning Mahowny (2003)
19s. Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Brolin of course had his double-whammy debut last year, placing 3rd in Lead for No Country for Old Men and 15th in Supporting for Grindhouse. Devos gets her first supporting nod, having been cited three times before as a lead: 12th for Read My Lips (2002), 5th for Kings & Queen (2005), and 10th for Gilles' Wife (also 2005). Leandersson is of course new.

Again, Hong has only had the one previous (and lackluster in most folks' opinion) eligible film.

Skandies: #12

Picture: Happy-Go-Lucky (93/10)
Director: Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky (87/10)
Actress: Meryl Streep, Doubt (88/10)
Actor: Fu'ad Aït Aattou, The Last Mistress (74/6)
S. Actor: Ralph Fiennes, In Bruges (66/8)
S. Actress: Tilda Swinton, Burn After Reading (80/7)
Screenplay: Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent, The Duchess of Langeais (97/10)
Scene: Tonight we dine on bellydancing, The Secret of the Grain (50/4)



[Tried uploading the actual scene twice and both times there was no sound. So I'm afraid this brief snippet already available on YouTube is all you get. It doesn't look like anything extraordinary out of context anyway, really.]

HISTORY:

Leigh previously placed 2nd for Secrets & Lies (1996), 7th for Topsy-Turvy (1999), and 9th for Vera Drake (2004). He is slipping in our collective opinion.

Streep, a former Skandie winner in the supporting category for Adaptation. (2002), makes her sixth top 20 appearance; she also finished 8th for One True Thing (1998), 8th in Supporting for The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and had two supporting "nominations" in 2006: 3rd for The Devil Wears Prada and 5th for A Prairie Home Companion. Fiennes gets his first nod in nearly a decade after a strong early run, all in the lead category: 2nd for The English Patient (1996), 19th for Oscar and Lucinda (1997), and 19th again for The End of the Affair (1999). Swinton's résumé was posted yesterday when she placed for Benjamin Button. Aattou is new, and his appearance here will no doubt be ascribed to the D'Angelo Effect.

None of the Langeais writers (who frequently collaborate) have ever before placed.

Skandies: #13

Picture: Woman on the Beach (91/7)
Director: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Burn After Reading (76/9)
Actress: Naomi Watts, Funny Games (84/11)
Actor: Colin Farrell, In Bruges (69/7)
S. Actor: James Franco, Pineapple Express (57/8)
S. Actress: Tilda Swinton, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (78/8)
Screenplay: Fatih Akin, The Edge of Heaven (81/7)
Scene: Philippe steps into the abyss, Man on Wire (49/5)



[French dialogue is unsubtitled, but I don't think it really matters. You get the gist.]

HISTORY:

The Coens (or just Joel, as they used to claim) have previously placed 3rd for Fargo (1996), 10th for The Big Lebowski (1998), 5th for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 3rd for The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and 2nd last year for No Country for Old Men. So this is their weakest finish to date, excluding the weak-ass stuff like Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers that didn't place at all.

In addition to winning Best Actress in 2001 for Mulholland Dr., Watts has placed 12th for 21 Grams (2003), 20th in Supporting for I ♥ Huckabees (2004), and 7th for King Kong (2005). Swinton makes her sixth top 20 appearance: 18th in the lead category for Female Perversions (1997), 5th (lead) for The Deep End (2001), 9th for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), 19th for Thumbsucker (also 2005), and 4th just last year for Michael Clayton. Franco was covered two days ago when he placed 15th in the same category for Milk. Farrell has never before made the cut.

This is Akin's first Screenplay nod; he failed to place for Head-On, though it finished 12th in Best Picture.

Skandies: #14

Picture: The Wrestler (91/7) [tie for #13]
Director: Lance Hammer, Ballast (69/4)
Actress: Melissa Leo, Frozen River (82/6)
Actor: Karl Markovics, The Counterfeiters (68/6)
S. Actor: Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight (53/4)
S. Actress: Jane Lynch, Role Models (77/8)
Screenplay: Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky (69/9)
Scene: "What did we learn, Palmer"? (coda), Burn After Reading (47/4)



HISTORY:

Hammer gets the nod for his feature debut.

Eckhart is the veteran of this group, having finished 2nd in Lead for In the Company of Men (1997), 19th in Supporting for Erin Brockovich (2000), and 9th in Lead for Thank You for Smoking (2006). Leo previously placed 18th in Supporting for 21 Grams (2003). Lynch and Markovics are new.

Leigh took 4th in Original Screenplay for Secrets & Lies in 1996, the sole year I had separate categories for original and adapted works. (To the continuing annoyance—that I changed it and won't change it back, that is—of one of the August Voting Body's two professional screenwriters). He also finished 6th in Plain Old Screenplay in 1999 for Topsy-Turvy and 9th in 2004 for Vera Drake.

Skandies: #15

Picture: Flight of the Red Balloon (83/7)
Director: Jia Zhang-ke, Still Life (68/6)
Actress: Ludivine Sagnier, A Girl Cut in Two (65/10)
Actor: Dore Mann, Frownland (68/5)
S. Actor: James Franco, Milk (50/7)
S. Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow, Iron Man (77/8) [tie for #14]
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat, The Last Mistress (64/7)
Scene: Monologue, JCVD (45/4)



[You know, I tried watching this again and couldn't even get halfway through it. What is wrong with you people. How could you vote this tedious crap in and fail to pay proper homage to what is easily one of the year's most awesome scenes.]



HISTORY: This is Jia's first citation for Director.

Paltrow makes her sixth appearance in the top 20. The roll call: 19th in Supporting for Hard Eight (1997), 7th in Lead for Shakespeare in Love (1998), 16th in Lead for Shallow Hal (2001), 10th in Supporting for The Royal Tenenbaums (also 2001), and most recently 14th in Lead for Proof (2005). Sagnier previously placed 18th in Supporting for 8 Women (2002) and 14th in Supporting for Swimming Pool (2003). Franco and Mann are new.

Breillat has been cited as a director before (for Fat Girl), but this is her first Screenplay nod.

Skandies: #16

Picture: Man on Wire (81/7)
Director: Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler (66/7)
Actress: Catherine Deneuve, A Christmas Tale (63/7)
Actor: Richard Jenkins, The Visitor (65/8)
S. Actor: Mark Strong, Body of Lies (50/4)
S. Actress: Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married (77/8) [tie for #14]
Screenplay: Robert Siegel, The Wrestler (62/6)
Scene: The negotiation, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (42/5)



[Going again with a crappy squeezed clip that's already online, because I don't know how to add subtitles. This isn't the entire scene, but it's 90% of it.]

HISTORY:

Aronofsky previously placed 6th in 2000 for Requiem for a Dream. (Which I happened to rewatch a few days ago, for the first time since it played at Toronto. I'd now go so far as to say that its first 40-45 minutes are among the most amazing sustained achievements of the decade, just in terms of pure cinema. Pity about the rest of the movie, though.)

This is La Deneuve's first nod since way back in '96, when she finished 17th in the same category for Téchiné's Thieves (Les Voleurs). At this rate, moving up one notch every 12 years, she will win Best Actress in 2188. Jenkins, somewhat surprisingly, has never before placed. Neither have Strong or Winger, for more obvious reasons.

I'm pretty sure Siegel would prefer us to think that The Wrestler is his first produced screenplay.

Skandies: #17

Picture: Let the Right One In (69/7)
Director: Hong Sang-soo, Woman on the Beach (63/5)
Actress: Inés Efron, XXY (58/5)
Actor: Michael Shannon, Shotgun Stories (64/6)
S. Actor: David Strathairn, My Blueberry Nights (45/4)
S. Actress: Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading (75/9)
Screenplay: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (57/7)
Scene: The prisoners' dilemma, The Dark Knight (40/4)



[Just a 3-minute section of this scene (which borders on sequence, but whatever), in crappy squashed format, because I'm not gonna go to the trouble of creating a proper clip for a movie that the entire developed world has seen.]

HISTORY:

This is Hong's first citation for Director, though of course that's only because none of his best films have been eligible. (The only previous one to be commercially released was the comparatively little-admired Woman Is the Future of Man.)

Shannon placed 8th in the same category last year for Bug. Strathairn finished 6th as a lead in 2005 for Good Night and Good Luck. McDormand makes her fifth appearance in the top 20, though her first in seven years; she previously finished 3rd in Lead for Fargo (1996), 4th and 17th in Supporting in 2000 (for Almost Famous and Wonder Boys, respectively), and 8th in Supporting for The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Efron is new.

This is Lindqvist's first produced screenplay. (He adapted his own novel.)

Skandies: #18

Picture: Still Life (62/5)
Director: Michael Haneke, Funny Games (58/7)
Actress: Miriam Toews, Silent Light (45/5)
Actor: Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon (58/6)
S. Actor: George Clooney, Burn After Reading (43/5)
S. Actress: Alexis Zegerman, Happy-Go-Lucky (60/7)
Screenplay: John Patrick Shanley, Doubt (55/7)
Scene: Barbed-wire/staple-gun match, The Wrestler (40/3)


sk18 from Mike D'Angelo on Vimeo.

[Well, it's not ideal—the audio went out of sync, for one thing—but it's better than nothing. WARNING: This clip is not for the squeamish.]

HISTORY:

Haneke previously placed 13th for the original Funny Games (1998), 12th for Code Unknown (2001), 14th for The Piano Teacher (2002), and 2nd for Caché (2006).

Of the actors, only Clooney has an extensive Skandie history—mostly with the Coens. In the lead category, he came in 15th for Out of Sight (1998), 5th for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 8th for Intolerable Cruelty (2003), and 10th just last year for Michael Clayton. This is his first supporting nod. Sheen finished 8th in Supporting in 2006 for The Queen. Toews and Zegerman are new.

Shanley had not previously written an eligible film during the Skandie era, save for, uh, Congo.

Skandies: #19

Picture: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (50/7)
Director: Jacques Rivette, The Duchess of Langeais (55/7)
Actress: Julianne Moore, Savage Grace (42/5)
Actor: Benicio Del Toro, Che (53/6)
S. Actor: J.K. Simmons, Burn After Reading (43/3)
S. Actress: Ann Savage, My Winnipeg (58/5)
Screenplay: Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light (50/6)
Scene: Rachel bathes Kym, Rachel Getting Married (40/2)

[Unfortunately, I'm unable to show you this scene, as my screener was, um, destroyed immediately after viewing according to Sony Classics' dictates, yeah that's it, and I can't find even a crappy cam version of the film online. But that's okay because, while I'm choosing not to be dictatorial about it, in my opinion this is really more of a brief tender moment than an actual scene per se. In lieu of the clip, I will share with you a description of the scene/moment in question that I found on kids-in-mind.com: "A woman bathes another woman in a bathtub (they are sisters and nothing sexual is implied): she washes her back with a sponge, and specifically, a tattoo on her back and shoulder area; the woman in the bathtub sits up, and holds her arms over her breasts (we can see the bare sides of her breasts and bare legs)." The site gives the film 6/10 on its sex/nudity scale. Also apparently its message is: "Family will forgive, but not forget. Life is measured by how well you love others."]

HISTORY:

This is Rivette's first citation for Director. His only previous eligible films were Va savoir and Secret défense; I'd totally forgotten that the latter even existed, to be honest. (Up/Down/Fragile was technically eligible in '96 due to an eyeblink NYC release, but it was a different world back then and only four voters even saw it.)

Of the actors, both Moore and Del Toro are previous Skandie winners. This is actually the former's first nod since she won Actress in 2002 for Far From Heaven. She also won in 1995 (Safe), placed 3rd in Supporting in '97 (Boogie Nights), 13th in Supporting in '98 (The Big Lebowski), and had three freakin' appearances in '99: 11th in Lead (The End of the Affair) and 8th and 15th in Supporting (Magnolia and An Ideal Husband, respectively).

In additioning to taking the Supporting Actor trophy, here as everywhere else, for his work in 2000's Traffic, Del Toro has had two other Supporting nods: 10th in 1998 for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and 13th in 2003 for 21 Grams. This is his first Skandies appearance as a lead.

J.K. Simmons previously finished 18th in Supporting as J. Jonah Jameson in the first Spider-Man (2002), having been shamefully overlooked last year for Juno. (Bad voters! Bad!) Ann Savage, meanwhile, makes her first appearance since placing 15th in 1946 for Renegade Girl, though that was clearly a retroactive apology for ignoring her in Detour the year before.

Reygadas' screenplays for Japón and Battle in Heaven were justly ignored on account of those films are retarded.

Skandies: #20

Picture: Funny Games (50/6) [NOTE: the original Funny Games placed 16th in 1998]
Director: Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (55/6)
Actress: Galina Vishnevskaya, Alexandra (41/5)
Actor: François Bégaudeau, The Class (52/5)
S. Actor: Benoît Magimel, A Girl Cut in Two (42/4)
S. Actress: Go Hyun-jung, Woman on the Beach (50/6)
Screenplay: Abdellatif Kechiche, The Secret of the Grain (49/6)
Scene: Bank robbery, The Dark Knight (39/4)



NOTE: I couldn't find the entire scene on YouTube, but I did find most of it here. The embed above is actually the scene's brief conclusion. (I couldn't embed the main clip as the dude who uploaded it disabled that function.) There's roughly 30 seconds of overlap between the two.


HISTORY:

This is Woody Allen's first appearance in Best Director. Surprisingly, he failed to make the cut three years ago for Match Point, even though the film placed 13th in Best Picture. Likewise, Kechiche wasn't nominated for writing his only previous eligible film, Games of Love and Chance.

All of the actors are newcomers.