Sunday’s specials:
In Spielberg’s Middle East the only way to achieve peace is by renouncing violence. But in the real Middle East the only way to achieve peace is through military victory over the fanatics, accompanied by compromise between the reasonable elements on each side. Somebody, the Israelis or the Palestinian Authority, has to defeat Hamas and the other terrorist groups. Far from leading to a downward cycle, this kind of violence is the precondition to peace.
The best, according to the New York Online Film Critics.
Best Picture The Squid and the Whale
Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)
Best Actress Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice)
Best Director Fernando Meirelles (Constant Gardener)
Best Supporting Actor Oliver Platt (Casanova)
Best Supporting Actress Amy Adams (Junebug)
Best Breakthrough Performer Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow, Crash, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Four Brothers)
Best Debut Director Paul Haggis (Crash)
Best Screenplay Paul Haggis (Crash)
Best Documentary Grizzly Man
Best Foreign Language Downfall
Best Animated Wallace & Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Best Cinematography March of the Penguins
In L.A., they’re swinging a bit differently:
Best Picture:
Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up:
A History of Violence
Best Director
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up: David Cronenberg, A History of Violence
Best Actor
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Runner-up: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Best Actress
Vera Farmiga, Down to the Bone
Runner-up: Dame Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Best Supporting Actor
William Hurt, A History of Violence
Runner-up: Frank Langella, Good Night, and Good Luck
Best Supporting Actress
Catherine Keener, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Capote, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, & The Interpreter
Runner-up: Amy Adams, Junebug
Best Screenplay
TIE between
Dan Futterman, Capote
and
Noah Baumbach, The Squid & The Whale
Best Cinematography
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Runner-up: Chris Doyle, Kwan Pun Leung, Yiu-Fai Lai, 2046
Best Production Design
William Chang, 2046
Runner-up: James D. Bissell, Good Night, And Good Luck.
Best Music Score
Howl’s Moving Castle, Joe Hisaishi
Runner-up: Tony Takatani, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Best Foreign-Language Film
Cache, directed by Michael Haneke
Runner-up: 2046, directed by Wong Kar Wai
Best Documentary/Non-Fiction Film
Grizzly Man, directed by Werner Herzog
Runner-up: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room directed by Alex Gibney
Best Animation
Nick Park and Steve Box, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The nominations are in for the Broadcast Film Critics’ Awards. Lots of interesting choices here.
I also see that your library has got Travel Edition 1990-2005. That’s a nice summary of Saint Etienne’s career, from their early, more clubby/dance material (including a dance house cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”) to their more recent straight up pop stuff. Some of my fave Saint Etienne tracks are on there (“Nothing Can Stop Us”, “He’s On The Phone”, etc.).
The Da Vinci Code lawsuit raises an interesting conundrum – if the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” assert that their book is a recounting or reconstruction of historical facts, something Dan Brown seems to aver in his citation of the prior book as a defense of the “historicity” of the background of DVC, one has to wonder how the HBHG authors can claim copyright to the ideas in their book. Either they desire their work to be accepted as a “true history” in the sense of, say, a William Manchester biography of Winston Churchill, in which case they cannot claim copyright to the sequence of historical events described in their book, or they intend it to be “true history” in the sense of, say, WWE RAW, in which case they may have an airtight claim … ;o)
Scholars sue over all sorts of weird things. Some years ago, Dead Sea Scroll scholar Elisha Qimron sued the Biblical Archaeology Society for copyright infringement (or some such charge) because they printed his reconstruction of a Dead Sea Scroll without his permission; he won the case in an Israeli court and was awarded something like 100,000 shekels. The thing is, if his reconstruction was correct, would the text really be his to copyright?
As for the lawsuit against The Da Vinci Code, the HBHG authors may have difficulty proving their claims of plagiarism when, in fact, The Da Vinci Code explicitly credits their book as one of several sources and even names one of its characters after the HBHG authors themselves (Leigh Teabing, the Ian McKellen character, is an anagram of Leigh and Baigent, the HBHG authors).
they have the weepies available on emusic.com, fyi. and if you haven’t checked out emusic, you really should.
You mean Fellini’s clowns have never scared you?! I think they’re pretty creepy, too…