Oscar Took a Poo On You, 2005

Viggo Mortensen



No comment necessary. Maybe he’ll get another chance at a nom, maybe not. But Oscar surely took a poo on Viggo.

David Cronenberg



OK, so Paul Haggis, who we’ve never heard of before, got a nomination. I hate to dump on a movie I haven’t seen (Crash is the only Best Picture nom I haven’t seen)…. But COME ON. Not only did Paul Haggis yank away the nomination that should have rightfully been Cronenberg’s, but he STOLE the name of his movie from a very recent Cronenberg film. If Cronenberg wasn’t Canadian he would probably beat Paul Haggis up.

Clifton Collins, Jr.



As I’ve said before, I thought that Clifton was a shoe-in for a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He didn’t get one… what can I say, this isn’t the year of the Hispanic. He did play a character of questionable sexuality though… I guess his performance wasn’t full-on Brokeback enough to get a nomination.

Q’Orianka Kilcher



I honestly think that the only reason Q’Orianka didn’t get a nomination is because the young, ethnic newcomer Oscar nod was given to Keisha Castle-Hughes last year, and the Academy couldn’t possibly nominate a different young, ethnic girl the very next year. Better to nominate people who certainly don’t need another nomination… like Dame Judi Dench, who gets nominated so often she sells her spare nominations on ebay. Seriously, Q’Orianka carries The New World, and her transformation in the last third of the movie is remarkable. She does it all with her eyes and her breathing patterns. It’s amazing, I swear.

I’m actually having people over to watch the Oscars this year… and I don’t care about any of the categories, honestly. The only one I’m going to be rooting for is New World for Cinematography. Come on, the two best movies of the year were released by New Line… maybe they should have followed Lion’s Gate suit and sent out 30 bazillion screeners of A History of Violence and The New World.

Thanks, Canada!

I think it’s about time for me to thank our liberal neighbors to the North for providing me with such high-quality entertainment over the years. Here is a brief list of some of my favorite Canadian exports, in no particular order:

KIDS IN THE HALL



I’ve been rewatching this show for the first time since high school. The Kids in the Hall are simply brilliant. Bruce McCulloch was always my favorite – he’s a short, intensely bitter, perpetual-loser kind of guy. Anger always leads to good comedy. Upon rewatching the episodes, I find myself more consistently drawn to Scott Thompson. Not only is he gloriously faggy, but his heart is also full of hate. He’s sublimely derisive and always says incredibly offensive things during talk show appearances. That’s also good comedy.

SKINNY PUPPY



Thanks to their liberal upbringings in liberal Canada, the members of Skinny Puppy manage to be about 200% more liberal than their American industrial music peers. Every liberal political complaint that has ever existed since the beginning of time can be found detailed in Skinny Puppy’s songs. And they’re animal rights activists to boot, too. Thanks, Canada!

THE NEWSROOM



My favorite new TV show – so what if it’s suspiciously close in theme and tone to the Larry Sanders Show and The Office? The Newsroom predates The Office by quite a few years, and since it’s Canadian, it’s more liberal. And I get to add Ken Finkleman (the writer/star/producer/director/etc.) to the growing list of brilliant, studly older men I’d like to… meet.

SEASONS 1-5 OF THE X-FILES



OK, The X-Files is not a Canadian show. I realize that. It is, however, my favorite TV show of all time. A huge part of why I found it so appealing initially was the consistency of tone, which was due in large part to the fact that it was shot in the creepy woods and creepy towns of Canada. The show began to falter during the sixth season when it moved location to L.A. - no coincidence there. Of course, I remained a loyal fan to the bitter end, and the show picked up some good steam during the last two seasons in spite of its lack of Canadian surroundings.

DAVID CRONENBERG



Long Live the New Flesh! Cronenberg is my favorite living director, enough said. Only Canada could produce somebody who is so entirely demented but yet civilized at the same time. I just discovered that two of my Canadian interests converge – David Cronenberg stars in several episodes of The Newsroom (I haven’t seen them yet, but will as soon as the DVDs arrive in the mail). I ordered them from Canadian Amazon.com, and they sent the shipping information in both English and French. Thanks, Canada!

THE NEW WORLD

All right, time to wax poetic about my favorite movie of the year, The New World. I’ve only seen it in the theaters four times, and would have seen it several more times if it hadn't been unceremoniously yanked from the theaters already.

I’ll be the first to admit that this movie is not for everyone. People always ask me what good movies are out in the theaters, and lately I’ve been telling them The New World is the best one out right now, but also recommending that they not watch it. It really is a great example of a transcendental film, but if you’re not in the right mood or frame of mind you’ll miss it entirely and think it’s just a beautifully shot snooze-fest. Terrence Malick really has a knack for creating films that exist outside of time, and that’s a very interesting choice to make for a film that purportedly covers a historically significant episode of our country’s past. I would say that although the film switches perspective between the main characters and an omniscient perspective (maybe Nature), the overall film technique is definitively non-Western, which makes it especially effective during the scenes shot from the Native American perspective.


Another interesting technique that Malick uses (another thing that most people would just find obtuse and obnoxious) is his peculiar presentation of dialog and narration. One example is towards the middle when Christopher Plummer is giving a momentous speech to the settlers. I don’t remember the particulars of the speech, but in the middle the volume just fades away and the camera wanders elsewhere. Scenes like this aren’t really allowed to begin or end – it’s as if Malick is reminding us that none of this really happened, or at least none of it really happened in the way it’s been presented to us by Western historians. At other points the dialog between characters is overlapped by narration. Even after two viewings there are whole sequences of dialog that I was unable to understand – and this in a movie that’s very sparse with the words to begin with.


Without giving too much away (since I know no one has seen this film) – the final chapter of the film really is the most moving sequence I’ve seen in recent memory. It takes place in England, and after a couple hours of being lulled into a trance in the swamps of Virginia, the buildings and bustle of England appear bizarre and foreign (even to us city folk). The scenes shot in the topiary gardens are absolutely brilliant. Seeing the Native American character walk around the obsessively groomed and restrained topiary garden is really touching – there’s no dialog, but you know exactly what he’s thinking. Malick manages to film this scene as if it takes place in an alien world. And the final scene between Q’Orianka Kilcher and Colin Farrell is amazing – hey, maybe the whole point of the movie really is “Men are Stupid.”

So, I guess to wrap it up, I should really recommend that everyone see this movie, even if you’ll be bored. Take a chance – anyone interested in non-Western historical ideas, or Native American culture, or atypical filmmaking, or hot sweaty Colin Farrell and Christian Bale should really give it a shot. And it’s an easy movie to drag the boyfriends to – Q’Orianka Kilcher is stunningly beautiful, and although she was only 14 when the film was shot, she looks about 24, so that makes it all right (I think?) And although I’d like to look forward to Malick’s next movie, that’ll happen either ten years from now or never, so I’m not getting hyped up quite yet.

Oh, and I updated my Best of 2005 list below...