You Say Tomato

Sarah Pettitt, Remembered

A brilliant appreciation of Sarah Pettitt, a journalist who helped reshape the U.S. gay and lesbian press, by another seminal voice in the post-Stonewall gay press, Michael Bronski. Pettitt died a couple of weeks ago, aged 36. I never had the chance to work with her, but I sure wish I had.

Bad Blogger Junio

I’ve been a very bad blogger in the last couple of weeks—ever since my routine was interrupted by that trip to New York, in fact. The trip and its resulting discombobulation (after all, it’s not like the tasks you’d usually tackle if you were at home go away—they just get postponed and crammed together with the current week’s) are partly to blame, but the fact is I just haven’t had much time. The week before we went to New York, Russian classes resumed, and although it’s only two 90-minute sessions per week plus homework, that seems to account for a good bit of my “free” time.

Look at it this way: In the week, I leave the house at 6:15 a.m. (in theory anyway; in fact, I rarely manage to get out before my absolute drop-dead, lag about any longer and you’ve missed your ride, gel, deadline of 7:15) so that I can read the paper before heading off to work. This is more than idle amusement. I need to have read the paper by the time I get to the office because there’s no time to do it once I’m there (ironically enough, since it’s one of those rare jobs where it’s perfectly acceptable—encouraged, even—to sit at your desk leafing through the broadsheets). I get home around 6:15 p.m.—or 8 on Russian class nights—and I often have to do a little bit of work from home. Ideally, I need to start getting ready for bed around 9:30 so that I can get enough sleep to get through the next day. So, on Russian nights, that leaves me with a monster 90 minutes of free time—during which I have to eat, catch up on Coronation Street, and blog. Friday nights are also out of the question since if I’m not completely shattered, I’d rather go see a movie than spend any more time tapping at computer keys.

Incidentally, just a few years ago, I’d have read that line about getting ready for bed at 9:30 and laughed out loud. I’m not naturally an early to bed kind of person. At university, in my long years of un- and underemployment, and when I worked at right-on companies, I followed the “stay up until the silly hours watching terrible late-night television, then lie about in bed the next day long past the hours when grown-ups are up and about” lifestyle. This is really the first job I’ve had where I work long hours not because anyone’s standing over me or because anyone’s counting, but because I want to, and I like what I do—most of the time. I’m absolutely convinced, though, that there’s no way I could manage it if I hadn’t had all those years of slacking. They were a long stretching exercise so that I could get through the current rat race.

The Post-ChaChanzaa Crash

Now that ChaChanzaa has come and gone, it feels really weird to come home and not head straight for the sweatshop—I mean craft room—to work on my gift. In the end, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped, though the disappointments fall under the “forgive us the things we have not done” rubric, rather than “yikes, what a pig’s ear I made of that.”

My gift was a set of six carefully programmed and burned audio CDs in a lovely zip-up metal case (available here). I spent way too much time selecting the tracks and dithering about the running order, but you know how it is: You can take the DJ out of the studio, but …

So great is my pride in the CDs that I’ll make you a copy of one of them if you’d like. Just drop a line to ystblog[AT]hotmail[DOT]com telling me which one you’d like and where I should send it, and your wish is my command. Here’s the selection. (I really don’t recommend the final CD—the only reason those songs were chosen is that the recipient is currently fixated on finding and buying a home, so all the tracks have the word “home” or “house” in the title.)

I received a fabulous and delicious chocolate cake topped with a vehicle tricked out to look like a miniature red version of our dear vanpool—and sitting in every seat was a little Mini-Me. Other gifts included a goofy hand-knitted cap, a recipe book, a selection of stress-reducing items, a set of coasters and other pleatherette sewn goodies, a clock, and a shower curtain decorated with photos from vanpool outings and printout of e-mails from our alias. You can see the huddled masses checking it out below.



The food was fabulous (it helps that this year’s host lives with a professional chef/food writer—so even basics like bread, cheese, ham, and pears were mind-blowingly good), the Jell-O shots were effective, the champagne was delicious, and the company was vanpoolicious.

We concluded the evening with drunken dancing, preceded by the first public reading of S’s second vanpool sitcom screenplay. (The fantasy life of the van is just too complex to even begin to delineate here.) As was the case last year, I had the best lines and provided a deus ex machina to punish our rival vanpool—a flock of trained pigeons this time around.

This morning I was astonishingly hangover-free. We even managed to make it to my work’s holiday party (another weird tradition I won’t even try to explain) by 11 a.m. (I could maybe explain why we have our Christmas party in January, but justifying a 10 a.m. start is impossible.) At the party, I held several crying babies without ill effects. Yay Jell-O shots!

Joey Pants?

I was looking through the photos I took in New York last week when I remembered walking by the Belasco theater, where Rosie Perez and Joe Pantoliano (Ralphie from The Sopranos) are starring in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. I guess they didn't have room for Pantoliano's full Italian monicker, but still ... if I ever get my name in lights, I hope they'll at least find room for the whole thing.

Al Hirschfeld, RIP

Just last week we ate lunch at the Algonquin surrounded by Hirschfeld caricatures.

ChaChanzaa Comes but Once a Year

I spent most of the weekend working on my top-secret for-no-eyes-only ChaChanzaa project.

“What is that?” you ask. Well, every year my vanpool has a gift exchange, and being a very special vanpool, it’s a very special swap. We do a name exchange (getting more and more complicated since this was the third year, and we didn’t want to repeat anyone we’ve already “had” in the past), then we go off and create a present for the person we picked. That’s right, the gifts have to be hand-made. In previous years, I’ve made a deck of cards (made with rubber stamps, with the four suits representing the recipient’s interests—menswear, camp architectural icons, penises, etc.) and a home-bound journal with the iron-shavings-shifting bald-headed guy Wooly Willy on the cover (because the recipient looks just like Wooly Willy, well, before Willy gets a magnetic hairdo anyway). I’ve received a stop-animation video and a T-shirt (which came in some fabulous Junio-themed wrapping paper).

I’m pretty certain that no one from the vanpool reads this blog, but because secrecy is a key part of the ChaChanzaa ritual, and since ChaChanzaa falls on Jan. 24 this year, I’ll keep mum about what it is I’ve been cooking up until the blessed evening passes. Suffice it to say that I’m somewhere between a third and a half of the way done.

On Saturday evening after an excellent meal at the always superior El Greco, we went to see Hable Con Ella/Talk to Her. I saw it last summer in Paris, and although I enjoyed it (it was my No. 5 movie of 2002), I left the cinema wondering if I’d missed something since I didn’t have the benefit of English subtitles (my Spanish is good enough to not need them, but it’s still nice to have them in case of doubt). After a second viewing, I admire the film more—if I was of an academic bent, I’d be pondering a dissertation on animal images in contemporary Spanish cinema—but I enjoyed it less. There are some stunning moments—the first bullfight scene, the peculiar Caetano concert, or the dance performances, for example—that are amazingly effective at demonstrating how moving non-conversational communication can be; but overall I wasn’t as affected as I felt I should be, or as I felt Almodóvar wanted me to be.

I really liked All About My Mother—again with a healthy dose of “technical” admiration for the cleverness of his referencing of All About Eve—but I still missed the joy of his earlier movies. I feel like one of those Woody Allen cranks who long for his earlier, funny films, but I do miss the joy of silly movies like Entre Tinieblas or Que He Hecho Yo Para Merecer Esto? or the crazy elements in Mujeres al Bordo de un Ataque de Nervios. I don’t expect or want his movies to be laugh riots, but I long for that combination of laughter and sadness that has always been a big part of the appeal of all things Spanish for me. And not to get too film-studies on Pedro’s ample ass, but when the action of his films moves out of Madrid—usually for a plot-related reason—my enjoyment usually shifts too. I don’t know anything about his next film, La Mala Educación, except that it stars Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez, but I hope it’s set in the nation’s capital.

Killing Me Softly

My Top Ten CDs of the Year That I've Rarely Listened To

I've done this! In fact, on more than one occasion I've thought to take the shrinkwrap off a CD (or two!) just before visitors came over, lest they announce, "Hey, there are a whole bunch of CDs over here that you haven't even opened." These are the same CDs that, when I was in the music store, I would've sold my left nut to get my hands on. (If I were more conspiratorially minded, I'd think music and book stores release some kind of scent—casino-style—to prime people for purchasing.)

Where in the World is June?

I'm in New York, having too much fun to blog. That's a rare feeling for me. Not that I've been blogging (again) that long, but generally speaking, the more fun I'm having, the more I want to talk (show off?) about it. Actually, I think I'm too busy to blog. I'm working in our New York office during the day, then as soon as I sneak out of the office (feeling guilty, knowing the perma-New Yorkers are going to be there for a couple more hours), there's just time to dash to the theater or the movies or dinner, and afterward I just want to crash. Plus, our room, while luxuriously appointed, is tiny, and the thought of even taking my laptop out of my bag seems like it would ruin the delicate stuff-to-space ratio.

Tomorrow's a play/fly-home day, so I should have time to write, but for the moment, here are the highlights.

Touristy Broadway dining: Being too cheap (or crowd-hating) for Sardi's, we settled for Langham's and the Algonquin's Blue Bar. The Blue Bar's food is just average pub grub, but the atmosphere is fabulous. Bog standard fish and chips consumed while surrounded by original Hirschfeld drawings seem delicious.
Theater: On Sunday we saw Imaginary Friends, the new Nora Ephron play about the long-running feud between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. I wanted to see it because I did my undergraduate dissertation on Hellman, I used to enjoy Ephron's '70s-era humor writing, and I'd never seen Cherry Jones, "our" actor. Unfortunately, the play is very flawed. Did I love it nevertheless? You betcha.
Movies: Spend five days in New York and spend one precious evening at the movies? Sure, when the cinema is the Film Forum and the film is Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time. What a movie! Amazing art, a fascinating artist, and "artspeak" that didn't make me want to hurl.

Intacto

At this time of year, it’s tough to make movie-going decisions. There are a lot of “major” movies that I still haven’t found time for—Adaptation, The Hours, Chicago, Lord of the Rings, etc. I feel weird describing them as “major,” because much as I want to see Adaptation (the intense, fabulous inventiveness of Being John Malkovich earns Adaptation a place in anyone’s calendar), and as curious as I am about The Hours and Chicago, if only to discuss them with Oscar-obsessed buddies, I’m just not terribly excited by “big” movies. I’m sure snobbery’s a big part of it, but given the schlock that earns Oscar statuettes year after year, snobbery’s probably a healthy response.

I rehearsed all this as I looked at the movie section of the paper (a nice image, but you know I made my selections online!). All those award-bait movies are going to be around until the big show—or at least until the nominations come out. Meanwhile, there were two interesting-looking movies that will probably enjoy only a brief stay in Seattle.

So, on Sunday I went to the Varsity to see Intacto. The movie had been on my radar for a while. I’d seen previews for it in Spain back in fall 2001, but I couldn’t get a good sense of what it was about. Then when trailers started to show up here in Seattle, I was even more confused. I recognized Spanish actors, but everyone seemed to be speaking English.

Well, I needn’t have worried. The movie was excellent. Yes, it begins with a lot of English, but it’s very definitely a Spanish movie, with the lovely combination of visceral excitement and cerebral resonance that so often entails. (I was really impressed that Tony Scott made this point in his New York Times review of the film.) The lead actor is Leonardo Sbaraglia, an Argentine actor who was great in Marcelo Piñeyro’s Plata Quemada and Caballos Salvajes, but he’s totally convincing as a lisping Spaniard.

It’s the sort of movie that I want to be very careful not to spoil for anyone; I certainly don’t want to give anyone an excuse not to see it, but without divulging more than the trailer gives away, the movie’s theme is luck. What makes some people especially lucky—Holocaust survivors, the people who walk away from plane or car crashes or earthquakes while everyone else dies. Is survival really a positive thing? Can you control your luck? Who does it belong to? Can you take away someone else’s good fortune? Is there anything you can do to tip the odds in your favor? Is there a difference between luck and fearlessness?

Amid all these philosophical koans (and the director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, does a great job of posing the questions without diffusing the film’s impressive momentum), there’s a wonderfully inventive series of competitions, where a series of lucky men and women (they must prove their good fortune to gain entry) test their luck. The contests are bizarre, tense (because the audience—like some of the competitors—never really knows what’s coming next), dangerous, and exhilarating. And at the end (and the beginning) of the circuit is the “god of chance,” played by Max Von Sydow, a man of mystery who seems to live at the end of the world. (Actually, it’s the otherworldy lava landscape of Tenerife.) Oh, and there’s also a cop involved. And you know she’s lucky too.

Intacto is smart and exciting and fun, and it'll induce more people to buy Polaroid cameras than any movie since Memento.

Gangs of New York

I’m usually gung-ho to write about movies right after I see them, but more than a week has passed since I saw Gangs of New York, and I’m still not sure what to say about it. I wish I could claim that my issues are the sort of principled objections Sarah Kerr makes in Slate today: the lack of any women whatsoever, other than a few thieves and prostitutes superhuman enough to have their boobs hanging out even in the middle of winter, and the Woody Allen-like treatment of race (well, not exactly that bad—Scorsese does admit that black people exist[ed] in Manhattan, he just doesn’t really engage with them), which in this case consists of hours of glorification of tribalism, fighting, and scars, followed by a madcap three minutes into which all the exposition of the movie’s racial elements—as Kerr says, “the headline tragedy of the draft riots and the founding blueprint for urban racism”—are squeezed.

But no, that wasn’t why I didn’t like it. I just couldn’t get into it. One reason was all the knife-work and the blood and gore of the hand-to-hand combat that takes up much of the action. I spent a good bit of time putting my hands between my face and the screen, and by creating that physical barrier, I somehow stopped myself from inhabiting the movie. There’s something about knives—as opposed to guns or grenades or other cogs in the machinery of war—that puts me on edge. (In another life I was either a three-fingered butcher or the victim of a blade-wielder like Bill “The Butcher” Cutting.)

And it wasn’t just me. I saw it at the Neptune, where the seats are creaky, and at times in the movie’s more than two and a half hours you couldn’t hear the soundtrack for the squeaking of chairs, as folks fidgeted around restlessly. I’ve never seen so many people get up and go to the bathroom—or go out and make phone calls. At least they came back, but it was a dutiful kind of return, not an “omigod I can’t bear to be away for a second more than I need to.” As though folks had a sense it was a major film, but they didn’t quite see it themselves.

Or perhaps I’m projecting.

Overall, the acting was very good, the sets were great (a real screen stage instead of a digital creation), but a lot of the story was dumb. It was an epic that had been shrunk down into a tiny capsule, but there was nothing to soak it in to allow it to balloon up to an impressive size. Instead, we were supposed to look at the raw ingredients and see a sumptuous banquet spread out before us. Leo was OK, but the romance with Cameron Diaz was way overplayed, because, I guess Scorsese felt that father-son or father-figure-son love wasn’t enough to carry the movie. He probably wasn't wrong, but it just wasn't convincing; the romance came off like a 19th-century version of Pretty Woman.

The Soundtrack of 2002

In some ways, 2002 was the year I rediscovered music. Until about 13 years ago, music was front-and-center in my life. I was a radio DJ, I spent a ridiculous amount of my meager income on records, and then … I don’t know what happened. I went from buying six records a month to buying six CDs a year. In 2002, I got my groove back, in large part, I must say, from the stylish and enthusiastic music writings in blogs (him, him, him, and him, for example).

So, I’m too out of it to have the confidence to offer a “best of” list, but here are some of the CDs that got me all excited this year. (Note, many of these are pre-2002 releases, but I only discovered them in the last 12 months.) They’re in no particular order.

Madredeus: Electronico. Mostly excellent remixes dilute the sometimes too-clear-to-take purity of Teresa Salgueiro’s voice.
Koop: Waltz for Koop. What’s not to like? A Dave Brubeck album with Swedish guys in dresses on the cover.
Red Hot & Riot: The Musical Spirit of Fela Kuti. I was shocked to realize how many of the “Red Hot” albums I own. This is up there with Red Hot and Rio and Onda Sonora (see below) as my favorites of the series. I just wish they’d fade out the ends of the tracks rather than just drawing to an abrupt halt, which seems to be the house style.
Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon. Worth it for 1) “Mulemba Xangola,” by Bonga, Marisa Montes, and Carlinhos Brown; 2) General D’s fabulous rap on “Sobi Esse Pano, Mano”; and 3) realizing that although k.d. lang might be a brilliant torch singer, she doesn’t have the chops for fado.
Verve//Remixed. A brilliant concept, unevenly realized, but in most cases managing to put a new and positive spin on material that was already brilliant.
Cassandra Wilson: Belly of the Sun. I don’t even want to hear those endless stupid arguments about whether this is jazz. If you sing a pop standard like “Wichita Lineman” the way Cassandra Wilson sings it, it’s jazz.
Beth Orton: Daybreaker. Overhyped for sure, but it has some lovely moments, like “Paris Train.” (And no, I don’t only like it because it gives me another track to add to a “trains, boats, and planes” concept compilation CD.)
24 Hour Party People: The Official Soundtrack Album. Yipes, a trifecta for 24HPP, making all three of my end-of-2002 lists, but it’s hard to knock a compilation that takes you from “Anarchy in the UK” to “Here to Stay” in just 17 steps.
Gotan Project: La Revancha del Tango. I loved this CD when I finally got it (for some reason it’s still only available in the United States as an import), but now I’m in full backlash mode. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I saw their apparently impressive live show, but my current view is: second-rate tango (just compare the vapid version of “Vuelvo al Sur” on this album to the impassioned interpretation on Astor Piazzolla’s Tanguedia de Amor), with sloganeering masquerading as political content (does a sample of Evita Peron—hardly a progressive icon, whatever Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice would like us to think—shouting “el capitalismo foráneo” really offer any insight?), and excessive reliance on proto-dub.
Don Byron: Arias and Lieder. There are a million jazz-meets-electronica, world-music-meets-electronica, and even classical-meets-electronica and folk fusion (including Blue Note’s deliciously titled Folk’n’Hell) albums out there, but this is the best jazz-meets-classical fusion I’ve heard. Don Byron does things with a clarinet that Acker Bilk never dreamed of.

My Books of the Year for 2002

My 10 best books of the year list (yes, actually 11 again because I had to mention both Joe Sacco books) isn’t limited to titles that were published in 2002, but to books that I finally picked up and read during the year. They’re listed in the order I read them.

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. Franzen may be obnoxious, but the book is a wonderful, stimulating, informative read, with—gasp—characters that all think, speak, and act differently.
Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Yes it’s flawed and deeply uneven, but when it works, it’s brilliant, and when it’s funny, it’s hilarious.
The Girls in the Van: Covering Hillary, by Beth J. Harpaz. A gritty, behind-the-scenes look at the process of covering an election campaign, specifically covering it with a “how, why, what, when, where” Associated Press approach, all the while juggling parental duties and ethical dilemmas.
Palestine/Safe Area Gorazde, by Joe Sacco. Not so much graphic novels as graphic reportage. The drawings are excellent, but the reportorial skills are also superior; a brilliant combination. Important books on important subjects that are a delight to spend time with.
Friends, Voters, Countrymen, by Boris Johnson. I feel guilty about this one, but Johnson’s story of his adventures and misadventures on the campaign trail is amusing and illuminating. (For U.S. readers: Johnson is a floppy-haired Tory bumbler; a very successful journalist—he writes regular columns for the Telegraph, still edits the Spectator, and is always on television; and he’s now a Conservative Member of Parliament.)
Rough Music, by Patrick Gale. I think I’ve read all Gale’s books, and although I initially resented the move away from the light, funny tone of his early work, I’m now glad of the complex—but not excessively complicated—stories and the masterful story-telling.
24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You, by Tony Wilson. The novelization of a fact-based movie, written by the film’s main character. Wilson may be a wanker, certainly he seems to want us to think that, but he’s an original, intensively creative thinker with amazing instincts. It’s scary to think how the last 25 years would’ve been different without him.
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. One of those books you want to take the day off work to finish. Subtle, clever, and thought-provoking. Although it’s clearly inspired by the Japanese Embassy siege in Peru several years ago, this book came to mind during the Moscow Nord-Ost hostage crisis this October.
Porno, by Irvine Welsh. Another author whose shopping list I’d read. Brilliant, guilt-inducing, potty-mouthed.
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, by David Remnick. It’s hard to even imagine a superior work of nonfiction. An erudite, stylish page-turner.

My Movies of the Year

I saw 72 movies in 2002 (counting only theater viewings), well, 71 actually, since I saw one—24 Hour Party People—twice. Being an anal type, I have a list right here [taps it with a Shakespearean flourish] that tells me they broke down as follows: 25 U.S. movies, 13 U.K. films, and 33 non-U.K. foreign.

Since this is the time of year for lists, here’s my top 10 or so. (Some of them may not have been officially released in 2002, but I considered movies that came to Seattle during the year or that I saw as new releases in other cities.) As I typed out the list, I noticed that emotionality is what I craved this year—perhaps in reaction to all the closed-down emotionally unresponsive or emotionally random characters in several big Hollywood movies, though I also had a soft spot for restrained movies that were internally consistent.

1. Lucía y el Sexo/Sex and Lucía: I’m stunned that Julio Medem’s masterpiece has made so few year-end best-of lists. Medem’s the great auteur of the age—a brilliant, cerebral director who makes movies with unparalleled emotional impact. This gorgeous, meditative, smart movie was by far the best thing I saw this year. My viewing at SIFF was my second sitting—I also saw it in Madrid in 2001—and it held up magnificently.
2. 24 Hour Party People: Another two-timer. I’m sure there were personal resonances in this one, since I grew up in Manchester watching Tony Wilson on Granada Reports and have strong, clear memories of staying up late on schoolnights to watch So It Goes (as I recall, it was a Thursday night show and came on just before the Bea Arthur classic Maude), especially as I much preferred the first half of the movie that dealt with events I remember and bands I knew well. A great evocation of a time, a place, and a person. It reminded me why music can be so transformative.
3. Italian for Beginners: I held off on seeing this one for a long time—I just didn’t fancy a Dogma 95 travelog, but I’m glad I eventually made time for it (in Port Townsend, when I’d seen every other movie in town). It was another emotionally convincing—and moving—film, that really benefited from the D95 vow of chastity.
4. Sweet Dreams: A quirky Slovenian boy’s coming-of-age movie set in the 1950s. At this point, seven months after I saw it, I don’t remember too many details of plot and personalities, but I do remember being moved and amused and won over by the teenage hero who wants only a record player and perhaps a little love.
5. Hable Con Ella/Talk to Her: I love Almodóvar, and there were scenes in this movie that blew me away, but overall my rating was a mere B+. I was curiously unmoved by the film where Pedro broke the tear barrier for his male characters, and I resented what struck me the first time around (I plan to see it again now that it’s finally arrived in Seattle) as petty swats at Julio Medem. And while I love Fele Martinez and Paz Vega, I hated, hated, hated the shrinking man mini-movie.
6. Monsoon Wedding: I wasn’t mad about the last 15-20 minutes, but the broad cast of characters, the complex portrayal of family connections, and the overwhelming sense of joy made for great cinema.
7. Eight Women: Yes it was camp and corny, but there was some wonderful acting amid all the showy excess. I saw Isabelle Huppert in some stinkers this year (Merci Pour le Chocolat, anyone?), but her handling of the bitter, twisted-haired sister was just right. And the rolling-around make-out scene between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant was the year’s hottest, bar none.
8. Y Tu Mamá También: Raunchy and hormonal and emotionally complex. Quite a feat. Maribel Verdú has that apparently (but not really) empty-headed older woman breaking in young boys thing down—check out Carreteras Secundarias for another example of the genre. (The young man she “tutors” in that movie is Fernando Ramallo, the blond one in Nico and Dani.)
9. El Hijo de la Novia/Son of the Bride: A sweet Argentine movie about a selfish fortysomething guy, his commonsensical girlfriend, his wise old pa, and his ma, who has Alzheimer’s.
10. Real Women Have Curves: A great family drama with an incredible debut performance by America Ferrera. At times so true to life it seems incredible it ever made it to the big screen.
10. Between Two Women: In contrast with some of the other emotion-fests that I liked this year, this film is a beautifully controlled portrayal of a woman recognizing her boundaries, weighing her options, and choosing love and fulfillment. Barbara Marten holds the movie together with a brilliant performance

Honorable Mentions:
Elling: Sappy, sentimental award-bait, yes. But funny and moving and well-acted too.
Birthday Girl: For Nicole Kidman’s brilliant acting achievement alone. I haven’t seen The Hours yet, but it’s hard for me to believe that she could do a better job than she did in this movie just by cementing on a fake proboscis.
Das Experiment: A movie littered with McGuffins that are probably just discarded plot lines, but well worth seeing for Moritz Bleibtrau’s acting job.
Punch-Drunk Love: P.T. Anderson is an annoying mofo, but he’s an inspired, creative filmmaker, so much as it pains me to do so, I give him points for effort. (There’s no Oscar for mise-en-scène, though, as I hope Todd Haynes discovers in March.)
Rabbit-Proof Fence: Another movie that wins praise for restraint and an outstanding discovery in Everlyn Sampi as Molly, the leader of the three girls who trek 1,500 miles across Australia to return to their families.

Movies I'm Sorry I Missed:
I missed these on their way through Seattle, so I'll have to hope they score Oscar noms so they'll get a second run. Otherwise, I'll have to settle for DVD, which is a very bad second-best.
Ararat: Despite Felicia's Journey, I have no doubt Atom Egoyan is a movie genius
All or Nothing: I've never doubted Mike Leigh's artistic genius.
Bloody Sunday: It looks excellent, but it played one week at a distant cinema.

Movie Event of the Year:
Positive: Harold's Home Movies at the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.
Negative: The closing of the Broadway Market cinema. Now there are just two movie theaters (plus the quirky Little Theater) in my neighborhood, and since the Egyptian stopped being a repertory cinema, the same movies stay for months on end (or so it seems).

Worst Movie of the Year:
Biggie and Tupac: Nick Broomfield seems to think people watch documentaries to see the director bumbling around. There's a real story about murder and police corruption here, a story that's been effectively delineated in several books, but does Nick bother to do research or try to tell the story in a convincing manner? God no, that would be way too much effort. Execrable. (Sorry, I can't bring myself to link to it.)