LATTE-SIPPING CROWD: I’ve got your latte right here. God, I hate these people.
WORLD OF POOH—LAND OF THIRST: One of the last great indie albums of the 80s featured Barbara Manning and will probably never, ever be released on CD. You need this. Trust me. Grab it before it’s gone.
IT’S 3AM: Good selection of parodies of Hillary’s loathsome 3AM red phone ad over at YesButNoButYes. And while you’re there ... jeebus, this is fucking disturbing.
Clinton congratulated Obama and said she looks forward to continuing to campaign with him in Pennsylvania and the other 16 states or territories that still need to hold contests. But she also used the stage to critique her opponent. “When the phone rings at 3 a.m. at the White House, there’s no time for speeches,” she said.
Charming. Months and months more of this shit. Does anyone know if John Hodgman picked up any extra forms? He lives in my neighborhood.
(Hat tip to Will from sublimeguile for the Hodgman link. While you’re there, check out the King of Kong chaos that’s broken out on his blog.)
“Falling Slowly” from Once—My Oscar pick to (deservedly) win best original song
Sorry, no other selections today (unless you want to see how much Frank Rich hates Hillary’s va-jay-jay). Have some weekend work to get through and still recovering from that head cold that clobbered me yesterday morning. The Sunday Selector will return in its normal form next weekend.
Awhile ago I challenged my pal Pale Dave at Missing the Moon to an Oscar picks throw down, but I’ve been so busy at work I didn’t have time to throw together my predictions until now. The entries marked in red are my picks to win and the browns ones were on my short-list (read: don’t count them out). If nothing’s marked brown in a category it means I think the winner is a sure bet (there aren’t a lot of them this year). I’m battling a rather brutal head cold at the moment, but I’ll try to add some commentary in tomorrow if I have time.
If you want to make some predictions (or mock mine), feel free to do so in the comments below.
Performance by an actor in a leading role
George Clooney in “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Tommy Lee Jones in “In the Valley of Elah”
Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises”
Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Casey Affleck in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild”
Tom Wilkinson in “Michael Clayton”
Performance by an actress in a leading role
Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie in “Away from Her”
Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose”
Laura Linney in “The Savages”
Ellen Page in “Juno”
Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee in “American Gangster”
Saoirse Ronan in “Atonement”
Amy Ryan in “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton”
Best animated feature film of the year
“Persepolis”
“Ratatouille”
“Surf’s Up”
Achievement in art direction
“American Gangster”: Art Direction: Arthur Max; Set Decoration: Beth A. Rubino
“Atonement”: Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer
“The Golden Compass”: Art Direction: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
“Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”: Art Direction: Dante Ferretti; Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo
“There Will Be Blood”: Art Direction: Jack Fisk; Set Decoration: Jim Erickson
Achievement in cinematography
“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”: Roger Deakins
“Atonement”: Seamus McGarvey
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”: Janusz Kaminski
“No Country for Old Men”: Roger Deakins
“There Will Be Blood”: Robert Elswit
Achievement in costume design
“Across the Universe” Albert Wolsky
“Atonement” Jacqueline Durran
“Elizabeth: The Golden Age” Alexandra Byrne
“La Vie en Rose” Marit Allen
“Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” Colleen Atwood
Achievement in directing
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, Julian Schnabel
“Juno”, Jason Reitman
“Michael Clayton”, Tony Gilroy
“No Country for Old Men”, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
“There Will Be Blood”, Paul Thomas Anderson
Best documentary feature
“No End in Sight”
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience”
“Sicko”
“Taxi to the Dark Side”
“War/Dance”
Best documentary short subject
“Freeheld”
“La Corona (The Crown)”
“Salim Baba”
“Sari’s Mother”
Achievement in film editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum”: Christopher Rouse
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”: Juliette Welfling
“Into the Wild”: Jay Cassidy
“No Country for Old Men” Roderick Jaynes
“There Will Be Blood”: Dylan Tichenor
Best foreign language film of the year
“Beaufort” Israel
“The Counterfeiters” Austria
“Katyn” Poland
“Mongol” Kazakhstan
“12” Russia
Achievement in makeup
“La Vie en Rose” Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald
“Norbit”: Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”: Ve Neill and Martin Samuel
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
“Atonement”: Dario Marianelli
“The Kite Runner”: Alberto Iglesias
“Michael Clayton”: James Newton Howard
“Ratatouille”: Michael Giacchino
“3:10 to Yuma”: Marco Beltrami
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“Falling Slowly” from “Once” Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard and: Marketa Irglova
“Happy Working Song” from “Enchanted”: Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
“Raise It Up” from “August Rush”: Music and Lyric by Jamal Joseph, Charles Mack and Tevin Thomas
“So Close” from “Enchanted”: Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
“That’s How You Know” from “Enchanted”: Music by Alan Menken; Lyric by Stephen Schwartz
Best motion picture of the year
“Atonement”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”
Best animated short film
“I Met the Walrus”
“Madame Tutli-Putli”
“Même les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)”
“My Love (Moya Lyubov)”
“Peter & the Wolf”
Best live action short film
“At Night”
“Il Supplente (The Substitute)”
“Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)”
“Tanghi Argentini”
“The Tonto Woman”
Achievement in sound editing
“The Bourne Ultimatum”: Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg
“No Country for Old Men”: Skip Lievsay
“Ratatouille”: Randy Thom and Michael Silvers
“There Will Be Blood”: Christopher Scarabosio and Matthew Wood
“Transformers”: Ethan Van der Ryn and Mike Hopkins
Achievement in sound mixing
“The Bourne Ultimatum” Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis
“No Country for Old Men”: Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland
“Ratatouille”: Randy Thom, Michael Semanick and Doc Kane
“3:10 to Yuma”: Paul Massey, David Giammarco and Jim Stuebe
“Transformers”: Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell and Peter J. Devlin
Achievement in visual effects
“The Golden Compass”: Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”: John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier
“Transformers”: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier
Adapted screenplay
“Atonement”, Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
“Away from Her”, Written by Sarah Polley
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, Screenplay by Ronald Harwood
“No Country for Old Men”, Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
“There Will Be Blood”, Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson
Original screenplay
“Juno”, Written by Diablo Cody
“Lars and the Real Girl” (MGM), Written by Nancy Oliver
“Michael Clayton”, Written by Tony Gilroy
“Ratatouille”, Screenplay by Brad Bird; Story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird
“The Savages”, Written by Tamara Jenkins
TO MY GREAT CHAGRIN: The eagerly-awaited (in my house, at least) world premiere of the documentary To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore comes to MOMA this Wednesday, February 13th (also playing on March 1st). He was a complex, brilliant and vastly underrated performance artist and you can view some of his pitch-perfect and hysterical ravings in a video compilation we posted here back in September.
FUERZABRUTA: Friday I took my lovely wife Chris to see Fuerzabruta, the new spectacle from the creators of De La Guarda, for her birthday at the Daryl Roth Theatre and was totally blown away by it. I enjoyed De La Guarda, but thought it was a little over-hyped and found myself wishing it would come to an end about 45-minutes into it. Fuerzabruta, on the other hand, I never wanted to end, noticing at several points during the performance that my face was smeared with a thoroughly ridiculous shit-eating grin that only a child can accommodate without feeling like a complete tool. As an added bonus, I was selected by one of the Fuerzabruta “dancers” to join her on a metal platform and dance in front of hundreds of people before having an oversized, exploding paper cinderblock dropped on our heads. According to Chris the crowd was cheering me on (I inserted several of my death-defying robot maneuvers into my routine) and afterwards the dancer came over and gave me a big thumbs up when she found me back in the crowd. If you’re a New Yorker, I highly recommend checking this show out. If the $72 price tag is too steep for you, they sell $25 rush tix at the box office two hours before each performance.
If there’s anything I’m more obsessed about than US politics or UConn basketball, it’s Academy Award picks because I am reliably SO FUCKING GOOD at picking the winners (I’m loathed at a regular Oscar party with betting that I attend annually). It looks like I may have some bloggy competition going with my pal Pale Dave in that category (good cripes, he knows way too much about the costume design category) . Dave, consider this a challenge. It’s you and me, mano y mano before February 24th. Let’s do this.
FANTASTIC DOCUMENTARY COMING TO NYC: The wonderful and unique documentary Billy the Kid is opening this Wednesday, December 5th at the IFC Center in Manhattan for a limited engagement. Carve out some room for it if you live in NYC because it’s highly recommended. Make sure to check out the excellent trailer at the documentary’s web site (or these outtakes at YouTube). You can read our review of it at some point tomorrow here at Rumproast.
UPDATE: A new entry for our horribly neglected Worst.Band.Name.Ever category. One of the bands opening for Mudhoney tonight is called Pissed Jeans. No matter how good they are a little part of me will always hate them for that.
Normally I only write “The Selector” on Sundays but I am so freakin’ excited about the new documentary Bound to Lose that I had to shoehorn in another post. The Holy Modal Rounders were the most godwonderful skull fuck to crawl out of the NYC folk scene in the early 60’s. Their first two albums, unimaginatively titled The Holy Modal Rounders and The Holy Modal Rounders 2, stand to this day as first-rate alterna-folk treasures and have thankfully been re-released by Fantasy as a jam-packed two-fer that is one of the best deals you can find on a single CD today.
I had the pleasure and displeasure of seeing the reunited Rounders twice in the late 90’s in NYC. The first show at the now extinct Bottom Line was a real treat, an ear-to-ear smile-athon ... just way too much fun. So much fun, in fact, that a totally inebriated Steve Weber (is there any other?) had to, quite literally, be dragged off stage. The second show I witnessed at the also extinct Tonic was a contentious mess, Weber and Peter Stampfel clearly not enjoying being in the same room together, let alone sharing the same planet. Bound to Lose appears to cover all of the love and all of the loathing and it has finally crawled (probably on its belly) to NYC for a seven day run (12/7-12/13) at the Anthology Film Archives. The first and last nights will feature performances by Stampfel (with Jeffrey Lewis & the Jitters—and an open bar—and Gary Lucas, respectively) and they’ve tucked all sorts of goodies into the length of the run (including playwrite and ex-Rounder Sam Shepard rejoining Stampfel for a performance at Pianos following the 12/9 showing).
For more information, check out the film’s MySpace page (you can see the trailer and an outtake there, as well) or look below the fold for the info I lovingly cut n’ pasted for your edification.
I guess this is as good (and appropriate) a time as any to brag that I was in Eli Roth’s fake Thanksgiving trailer in the middle of the movie (movies?) Grindhouse directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. I was cast as a “hooligan” during the parade scene and you can see me (wearing sunglasses) for approximately a millisecond right after the long-haired guy yells, “Get out of the way!” I’m the hooligan who spins the tuba player around. A pivotal scene and expertly executed. Here’s a screencap so you can see how fucking intense I am:
And here’s a take that didn’t make it into the faux trailer. You can see me running in from the right in the black jacket and blue jeans. Once again, bathe in the intensity:
And I took the photo below of what I nearly tripped over in the special effects trailer. I’m putting it after the fold for the benefit of my more sensitive readers. I hope your turkey looks a lot better than this one:
AOL (yeah, I know) has a pretty decent run-through of the 25 biggest box office bombs and if you ever wondered why you don’t see much of Kevin Costner or Warren Beatty anymore, well, look no further. And if you ever wondered why you never saw the supposedly-halfway-decent Heaven’s Gate, let me enhance your bewilderment by presenting The.Most.Awesome.Movie.Still.Ever.:
“Darkon” is a documentary feature that follows the real-life adventures of an unusual group of weekend “warrior knights,” fantasy role-playing gamers whose live action “battleground” is modern-day Baltimore, Maryland, re-imagined as a make-believe medieval world named Darkon.
FREEmumia has just posted one of their always excellent movie previews and points us in the direction of the trailer for the Coen Bros.’ eagerly-anticipated No Country For Old Men. Man, does it look like it’s going to kick some major league ass.
Listened to a pretty good interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” featuring The Darjeeling Limited‘s Wes Anderson (director & co-writer) and Jason Schwartzman (actor & co-writer) yesterday. In the interview, Terry Gross asked Schwartzman if he ever got acting advice from Bill Murray and Jason told a story about a barroom conversation he had with Murray during the filming of Rushmore:
And then he also gave me a piece of advice that I’ve never really understood which, I said, “How do you know, Bill, when you’re in your character?” And he said, “How much do you weigh?” And I said, “I don’t know, a hundred and forty pounds.” And then he said, “Do you feel a hundred and forty pounds in your feet?” And I said, “No.” And he goes, “When you do, then you’ll know.”
