Three-6-Mafia, 1. Alfred Hitchcock, 0.

There weren't many surprises when the Oscars were announced, except for The Reader from left field, Kate Winslet's Best Actress switcheroo, and the fact that Revolutionary Road, The Dark Knight, In Bruges, Doubt, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Wrestler, et al. all craved a Best Picture nod, while what does Oscar recognize? Kung Fu Panda.

But after the year dies down, we'll argue about how it should have been Sean Penn, or how Kate Winslet deserved it more for Revolutionary Road, or if Brangelina were nommed because they are paparazzi moguls. And then we'll find some distance. Outside of the competition, there are these things called films, and we tend to forget about them in our quest to award them. Frost/Nixon could be a great movie on its own - I haven't seen it - but give it a nod and suddenly, everyone rails on it for being too stage bound (obvious fodder for adapted plays), or conveying little beyond its lead performance, or for being recognized solely because Oscar loves Opie.

I propose that we award movies five or ten years hence. Watch their immersion in our culture, note their durability. We still won't call them timeless, but there's something to be said for perspective. "As many performances as Meryl Streep has given recently," we might say, "none were as witty, pointed, surprising, vigorous, or peculiarly sympathetic as her turn in The Devil Wears Prada."

Here's my experiment: Let's flash back to 1996, and I'll use the nominated films for ease. Does anybody still watch The English Patient? What is Secrets & Lies? As earnest as Shine and Jerry Maguire were, the most lasting film of that year, for its offbeat ensemble, comedy amid tragedy, and wood chipper cameo, was Fargo. Hold the ceremony today, and I bet we'd hear another stammering, I-haven't-seen-sunlight-for-weeks speech from Mr. and Mr. Coen. The next year, James Cameron was king of the world. But after all the hype, maybe we can concede that the revised film noir of L.A. Confidential was a superior film. From that year, The Full Monty has definitely lasted (and it's about time comedies got some Oscar buzz), and Good Will Hunting still retains its fresh-off-the-bus authenticity. Would As Good as it Gets even be nommed today? It's the epitome of "Oscar-baiting film"... poor misanthrope Jack, who learns to love and accept. Yes, who knew Helen Hunt could act, but does she really deserve a statue for one good moment in a career that's tapered off?

I dub these revisionary Oscars the Kanes, in honor of that little 1941 movie that lost (in a now inconceivable vote) to How Green was My Valley. Even The Maltese Falcon was bested by this time-forgotten drama. Green may deserve gold, but as the sands of time have fallen, Orson Welles' film has had a greater impact on how we invent cinema, play tricks with light and sound, tell stories, not to mention the development of the surprise ending and, following that, the movie spoiler. Another example from 1964: My Fair Lady is a faithful adaptation of a musical adapted from George Bernard Shaw, but its most lasting contribution was upheaval over Julie Andrews being spurned; Dr. Strangelove, on the other hand, has come to define the black comedy. Even Mary Poppins is a more satisfying, continually inventive musical, and it also gave us years of poking fun at Dick Van Dyke's, um, dialect. And how on earth did these films even get nods?: Doctor Dolittle (1967), Hello, Dolly! (1969), Love Story (1970), and Ghost and The Godfather Part III (1990).

So with much ado, I present the Kanes to movies that last, for permanence is, I believe, one of the keys to art. 

1998: Even back then, Saving Private Ryan's loss was a shock.

1999: American Beauty and The Sixth Sense tie, the first for casting the suburban malaise myth as a comedy, the latter for a haunting psychological thriller that exemplifies quality genre direction. (Though M. Night may have lost voters for his recent output.)

2000: Memento for turning the screenplay inside-out.

2001: Sorry, Ron Howard, I'm going The Lord of the Rings here. Yes, the editing was ridiculous, but the first installment was the most fun, and few epics had accomplished such scope of vision since the 1960s, when everything was epic.

2002: Chicago didn't really revive the movie musical as much as Moulin Rouge! did. Adaptation had a devilishly ingenious third act. Y Tu Mama Tambien was raw, imperfect, overly ambitious in its symbolism, but a hilarious-deflating road film that refused to shy away from the pain of fading youth.

2003: Lost in Translation. The rise of the indie and Sofia Coppola's near-redemption for the evils of nepotism (see above: The Godfather Part III).

2004: Million Dollar Baby vs. Sideways. I think it's fair to say Clint Eastwood appeals to popular and critical audiences alike, and I'll give him the edge. Next year, though, I may choose the effervescent Sideways. Some years, more than one great movie makes it out (1994: how to choose between Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption? Oh, right, pick Forrest Gump). And this is why I stress perspective. 

2005 on are too soon to call, though I will wager that Brokeback Mountain, Capote, A History of Violence, and even Match Point will outlast the improbable Crash. Both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will likely top future lists for the decade, but how to choose between their equal despairing wails against the death of fate and the soullessness of capitalism?

Sometimes I agree, for the Academy often awards good films. But with the tears and campaigning and politics, we tend to forget it's about The Movies, how they entertain us, how they reinvent genres, how they express what mere words cannot. Plus some moments become iconic: would anybody currently give the 1987 Oscar to Cher (Moonstruck) over psychotic Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or 1939 to Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips over Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights? Dare we bring up the losses of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. (1950) or Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)? They are what last beyond the scope of this year's seven-hour, humorless (I'm conjecturing) extravaganza of not-so-pithy acceptance speeches and interminable montages. Honorary Kanes round the table.

What Betty Crocker Fails To Cover

Hungarian Goulash

Ingredients:
Patience
Half-cocked ignorance

1. Heat oil in Dutch oven. Unwrap beef chuck, already cubed, with haste. Ravage styrofoam container and mangle plastic in effort to remove beef from its biodegradable prison.
2. Fling half of quality meat, mercifully on sale last Saturday, into crevice between oven and counter. Remove cubes of meat from valley of disease and decay with broomstick. Note blue chemicals that seem to dwell in the nooks and crannies of your kitchen.
3. Think: What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? (also query Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, formerly celebrated today in Virginia). Wasn't his message to accept all people, no matter how tarnished or trodden upon?
4. Differentiate between cows and people. Chuck the chuck. Let the loss simmer for 1 hour, 30 minutes.
5. Boil rotini. Puzzle over why 9-10 minutes spawns firm noodles, and 10-11 minutes tender, and what results at 10 minutes even.
6. Savor half-recipe of goulash over rotini. Feel pride of cooking tinged with inward despair that there will be seconds but not thirds or fourths.

"I'd say it's perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances"

Woke up early on a Brookline morning: sunshine, wind gusts at bay. Jaunted over to Shaw's/Star for the week's grocery shopping. Bee-lined for self-checkout. Reconsidered my decision when I came to a tin of four chocolate chip muffins and rosemary-olive oil focaccia.*

[Note 1: Wish I could apply footnotes to my blog. Nonetheless, spell check does not recognize "focaccia". Suggests "flaccid" as a replacement.]

These were no ordinary muffins/focaccia; I pulled them from the sale rack in the back, which in a caste society equates with the population of untouchables. Nonetheless, I touched, I placed into cart, I tried to purchase. Does the four-digit PLU code work? Does the machine recognize the reduced-value of the sticker price? Does the man governing self-checkout have a clue what his own employee number is?

Various Star employees pass by, none of whom help me.* Ten minutes pass by as well. It's too early on a Saturday to be impatient, so my time diddles into nothingness as I wait it out. I will have my muffins and focaccia.*

[Note 2: I go to self-checkout for the sake of velocity; I'm not going to spend all my time waiting in line while other customers can't find their credit cards. Ten minutes of stilled self-checkout, though, convinces me to stop buying sale items.]
[Note 3: No red flag this go-around. Maybe spell check assumes that if you use a word incorrectly four times, by that point you must have a reason. Dangerous for the consonant challenged.]

At last he concocts a brilliant scheme: to type in the price himself. In the dormancy of our past ten minutes (days?), he must have forgotten I have two bakery items. This is the story of how I received free chocolate chip muffins from the grocery store.

An ethical dilemma arises: I notice this right away and think, "that's his fault for not charging me."* But he's clearly new and inexperienced; what about his uppers, who should take care of their downers in a moment of mini-crisis? For my free muffins cost the store $2.40. It's futile to imagine this solely on a small scale when, in cohoots with the Butterfly Effect, my response belongs to a generation of The Entitled.

[Note 4: Like when your math teacher didn't notice you wrote 31.7 instead of 3.17 and gives you points you didn't deserve, which in fairness won't be revoked. But in fairness to whom? The other students who wrote down 3.17? The grand scheme of the world in which math answers are either right or wrong but never accidentally okayed by Higher Authorities in an unresolved loophole?]

See, here's the real crux of it: I felt entitled to accept free muffins as an act of cosmic generosity for the wrongs I had endured by losing ten minutes of my sunny, non-windy Saturday morning. I certainly was not about to multiply my grievances by handing over further minutes to be squandered as the second price was computed. But then... Walked home in the non-wind and sun. Felt a twinge of hesitancy too fickle to call "guilt." Pondered, I don't know, my place in the world and whether or not my actions* had a greater effect beyond this silly little morning.

[Note 5: But really inaction.]

In a perfect world, the store produces muffins, and I pay $2.40 for them. Of course, edging out my inadequately-formed-guilt comes the fact that they were sequestered to the sale rack. Meaning that they were unpurchased muffins rescued by yours truly, and it's possible nobody would have taken them at all, and they would have assumed their destiny as dumpster fodder. But if there's less trash in the world - because of all this, I'm convinced, has vast implications beyond the miniscule nature of four muffins - dumpsters will be less full, perhaps fewer will be needed, garbagemen will be laid off, and once again I've hindered the economy with my shoplifting.

After all, lifting unpurchased muffins (or any substance) from a shop is shoplifting. Good intentions really become a game of manipulation: I Am Entitled To These Muffins Thanks Be To Allah, And I Would Have Paid For Them If The Store Hadn't Sleighted Me In The First Place, And This Is Only Fair To Me As A Valued Customer. To assauge myself, I offered our visitor Mark a muffin this morning. Maybe if I only eat three of them, and thus gain less satisfaction, I will have deprived Star of $1.80. Maybe my charitable action redeems my previous inaction, and brings the muffins in question to people, not dumpsters, that hunger for them. Maybe it's time now for you to offer some input into this quandry. It's only fair.

Nine Lives to Live

The wind ripples through my overcoat as I run to the T this evening. In my hypothermic delirium, I hear a guy shout, "I hate cats!" Without censoring myself, as if through free association, I immediately countered with, "Who in the world hates cats?" No, I didn't say that out loud, my lips wouldn't brave the wind; but my internal outburst startled me in its fervent hypocrisy. Why would I feel outraged at this Cambridge-dwelling feline-filcher when I myself have professed my animosity toward cats?

In my defense: They aren't lovable like dogs. They don't want to love and be loved; it's a one-way street of pampering for cats, and we their human servants must do the parallel parking. They don't laze and sprawl, they preen and posture. Artifice shrouded in theatricality compared to the earthbound allure of those who bark.

Once upon a time I couldn't be in the same room as a cat without rubbing my eyes raw. Back when you're ten, bloodshot eyes don't suggest inebriation but instead copulous swims without goggles. Time passes -- and suddenly the allergies don't seem as offputting. Still, keep your Kleenex on hand. And not because their adorableness reduces me to puddles of tears.

I even hold photographic evidence of how my feelings have tempered. Meet Gypsy, Heather's cat: a bit of a creeper, but a sprawler, too, and a nuzzler. She rubs her body against your leg to get to know you -- just like a woman.


I will never own a cat, or find much love for cats. But it's time we put aside our differences and strive to be amicable. There will be ground rules. No cuddling, no sleeping next to me, no purring for my affections. All contact must be hasty and meaningless. (And I will not call, so don't ask for my number.)

Blowing in the wind

Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

How many roads must a man walk down before he turns into Brad Pitt? Former Best Picture winner Benjamin Button must now learn to hang its face in shame, for Slumdog the underdog seems unstoppable. But don't give up hope, Mr. Button; I'm here to assess just how well you fit the shoes of 2008's Oscar-winning epic. And, really, the shoes of a certain 1994 epic, too.

Titular man with kick-ass moniker: He even comes equipped with a hefty dose of computer imaging. Disappointingly, he never gets to say "I'm Benjamin, Benjamin Button."
Childhood home in the Deep South: His mama isn't spouting aphorisms about chocolate this go-around, but he does grow up in a rambling old house full of guests. Sadly, none achieve the fame of Elvis.
What a storyteller: Some people just narrate from park benches; Benjamin had the wherewithall to keep a journal.
Meets the love of his life before 10: Just like peas and carrots, except here the peas look really old and the carrots very young.
Graduates from leg braces: And eventually, Brad Pitt graduates from five-foot-tall stand-ins.
First sexual experience in a brothel: In 1994, it was a sorority house, but who's counting?
Inspires legends to pursue their dreams: Brad Pitt only inspires fictional people, such as Tilda Swinton's English-channel swimmer. He lets her take care of the athletics rather than running his own way.
First man on deck: Where hurricanes once wiped out shrimp boats, here U-boats are the casualties. (Ships, especially when they sink, are extra points toward winning an Oscar.)
Questionable literary pedigree: Yes, it's F. Scott Fitzgerald. But a 167-minute film based on a 20-page story?
Reuniting with the whitest girl on the planet: Robin Wright Penn, no chance against Cate Blanchett. Tracy Morgan confirmed this at the Golden Globes in his tribute to post-racial America.
A Symbol of Destiny that bookends the film: Keep your feather. Button's got a giant clock that ticks backward.
The scourge of God: Just as AIDS takes out Jenny before her time, here Hurricane Katrina looms. The present-day moments, in which the story is read aloud, detract from the inventiveness of the film and Brad Pitt's de-aging. Part of the joy of a film like Button is suspending yourself in the storytelling and the milieu of the South, surrounded by kooky vignettes and characters reminiscent of Tim Burton. But the outer story almost redeems itself with...
An inspirational final shot that suggests our weight on earth continues beyond our lifetime. After Crash, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men, might we return to our feel-good Oscar movie? Even Titanic achieved this final shot, hard work considering the ship still sank.