Cynical Cinema

Recently, on the Doc and Woody show, we started talking about music in movies.  Which songs appeared most often in movies, and so forth.  We didn’t count classical music pieces (Orff’s “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana is one of the most-used pieces of music) and we ignored Christmas music (Silent Night would beat anything else).  Frankly, any Christmas music would likely outpace almost any other song, because it was all written before 1920, and as such it is all considered public domain.  This means a movie can put in a recording of a song like Silent Night without paying songwriting royalties.

Anyway, the number one song we came up with was Walking On Sunshine by Katrina And the Waves.  This, we believe, has been in more movies than any other song.  For me, the most memorable use of this song was in the movie High Fidelity, where Jack Black’s character, ostensibly the most snobbish music nerd in the world, puts on that song to rock out.  (Also great in that movie - the scene where the band Sonic Death Monkey launch into Let’s Get It On.)  High Fidelity has one of the greatest soundtracks of any movie, ever - The Kinks, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Velvet Underground - and yet the two songs I remember in context are those two.  Oh, and one more.  That one goes on Today’s List.

Here is Today’s List:  The best use of music in movies.  When you remember the scene because of the music, or the music because of the scene.  This excludes certain songs in movies, like “Iron Man” in Iron Man, because the tune plays only over the credits.  My criteria here - the song itself has to be good.  Not necessarily a great song, but a good one.  So, Celine Dion might have had a memorable song in Titanic, but that does not make the list because it’s Celine Dion.  Also, the movie itself has to be good.  Not necessarily great, but good.  Which means that although “Sweet Home Alabama” is used memorably in Con Air, it doesn’t qualify, because Con Air sucks.  So no Celine Dion music, no Rob Schneider movies.  Here goes:

15.  High Fidelity - The Beta Band - Dry The Rain:  As someone who once worked in a record store, this movie spoke to me in many, many ways throughout.  The best use of music, however, was the scene where John Cusack, as the record store owner, said “I will now sell five copies of the Beta Band’s 3 eps” or something like that.  He says it in a confidential, secretive-type whisper to one of his music-nerd employees, played by Todd Louiso.  Rather than asking, as most of us would, why Cusack is whispering, or making fun of him for acting like a secret agent when putting on a tune, Louiso buys right in.  “Do it,” he says, in a conspiratory whisper of his own.  This is Cusack’s way of relating to his weirdo employee, as though they are the only people alive who have heard of the Beta Band, and now they are going to spring “Dry The Rain” on unsuspecting customers, who will fall all over themselves to pick up the album.  Also, it’s just a wicked song.

14.  Grosse Pointe Blank - Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure:  John Cusack again.  This time, “Under Pressure” is playing while Cusack, a hit-man going to his 10-year high school reunion, is holding a baby.  As he holds the baby, he has something of an epiphany.  His life could have been far different had he taken a different path out of high school.  Or if he had stayed with his high school girlfriend.  The baby is part of that realization, but so too is the song, which triggers the decade-old memories.

13.  O Brother, Where Art Thou? - Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow:  Although this song is used many times in the film, I am referring specifically to the last time it’s used.  In a chaotic town hall environment, with George Clooney wearing his bizarre fake beard, the joy in this song comes through amazingly.  A great bluegrass soundtrack throughout the movie is punctuated by this song, which is fantastic.  And yes, it’s Clooney and John Turturro and the guys singing it, but that makes it even better.  This really is a magnificent tune.

12.  Goodfellas - Derek & The Dominoes - Layla:  I never really liked that long, drawn-out instrumental piano part at the end of “Layla” until I saw Goodfellas.  The instrumental part is not long and drawn-out when used in this movie.  In fact, it’s just long enough for Robert DeNiro to wipe out all of his enemies, hanging their bodies in meat lockers or dumping them in dumpsters.  And then Joe Pesci gets whacked.

11.  Reservoir Dogs - Stealer’s Wheel - Stuck In The Middle With You:  On the Tarantino Connection CD, which came out about 10 years ago, Tarantino is interviewed a few times about the use of music in his movies, which is generally very brilliant.  (Honorable mention here to “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” and “You Never Can Tell” from Pulp Fiction.)  In one of those interviews, he says “I don’t know if Gerry Rafferty appreciated the connotations I brought to ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’.  There’s a good chance he didn’t.”  Then the CD launches into the song.  Which is about the most perfect introduction to a song you can get.  Especially when that song was used in Reservoir Dogs as the soundtrack to the brutal sawing off of a cop’s ear.

10.  Apocalypse Now - The Doors - The End:  I am discounting classical and orchestral music here, which is why I am not picking the amazing helicopter scene set to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.  But the rest of the music in this film, especially the Doors songs, is brilliant as well.  And “The End” is so chilling, and so appropriate in context in Apocalypse Now, that it stands with Ride of the Valkyries as a memorable musical moment.  As Martin Sheen gets mentally prepared to assassinate Marlon Brando, he becomes a different person.  He will butcher Kurtz, not just take him out.  This is not just the end of Brando, it is the end of Sheen as well.

9.  Shaun of the Dead - Queen - Don’t Stop Me Now:  There are a lot of great musical references in Shaun of the Dead.  The scene where Shaun and Ed are going through Shaun’s record crate and deciding which LPs are bad enough that they can justifiably be thrown at zombies is terrific.  Also great are the songs in the movie, and none are better than “Don’t Stop Me Now”.  With strobe lights in the background, and in time to the music, the little group of survivors beats a zombie bartender with pool cues from the bar.  Of course, the fact that the strobe lights are on and the music is blaring is only attracting more zombies…what a great movie!

8.  Pulp Fiction - Dick Dale and the Del-Tones - Misirlou:  Like I said earlier, there are many candidates for best song from Pulp Fiction.  Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” is a magnificent choice for the dance-contest song at that 50s-style diner.  “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” is a perfect tune for the Uma Thurman character.  But “Misirlou” is the best music in the movie, since it is the best opening tune in a movie, ever.  After Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) stands up to rob the restaurant, delivering that great line - “any of you f- pricks move, and I’ll execute every m-f- last one of you” a surf tune kicks in.  And it sounds BADASS.  No one hears Misirlou any more without instantly thinking of Pulp Fiction.  Well, I don’t, anyway.

7.  Wayne’s World - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody:  I realize that this is the third Queen song I have put on the list.  And no, I am not some kind of rabid Queen fan where I need to mention them as often as possible.  In fact, I am fairly indifferent to Queen.  And by the way, Queen was responsible for one of the worst movie soundtracks ever made - the cheesy, horribly 80s, painfully silly soundtrack to Highlander.  However, the fact that Wayne’s World managed to resurrect this great tune and put it back on the charts so many years after it’s release is a testament to the popularity of the movie, which is pretty decent, and the quality of the song, which is awesome.

6.  The Ladykillers (2004) - Rose Stone with the Venice Four and the Abbott Kinney Lighthouse Choir - Let The Light From the Lighthouse Shine On Me:  This will be the worst movie on this list.  Guaranteed.  Not that it’s awful, because it isn’t.  It’s just a pretty amazingly weak effort from the Coen brothers, and Tom Hanks.  A bunch of guys, including the irritatingly loquacious Hanks, have rented out rooms in the house of an old, fat, bible-thumping woman in order to break into a riverboat casino from her basement.  The bible, and the thumping thereof, is a central theme in this movie, which leads to an absolutely killer soundtrack full of fantastic gospel tunes, co-ordinated by T-Bone Burnett.  And this one is the best of the bunch.  An absoultely mesmerizing gospel song by a tremendous group of singers.

5.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Burt Bacharach - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head:  I would never suggest that this is a heavy movie, or one that needs to have the mood lightened in any way.  But at the same time, it IS an absolutely brilliant movie in nearly every way, and this song might provide the best single moment in the film until that freeze-frame ending.  It functions almost as the soundtrack of a musical “montage”, but really accentuates the true nature of the relationship between Butch, Sundance, and the woman they both love.  There is no real animosity, no true hurt feelings, but rather this is just the way it is.  And for each person it is by turns blissful or melancholy.  And this song fucntions both ways.

4.  Forrest Gump - Buffalo Springfield - For What It’s Worth:  This song has been used in dozens of movies.  Most of those movies have been great, and this song has always been brilliant.  Recently used in Tropic Thunder, before that it was the opening theme of Lord of War, and before that it was re-done by Public Enemy with Stephen Stills to become the theme of the movie He Got Game.  But of course it’s most associated with the Vietnam movies of the 70s and 80s.  Just hearing that opening note can send a chill up your spine, and nowhere is this more true than in Forrest Gump.  I’m no huge fan of Forrest Gump, I think it’s pretty good but no amazing classic.  But this song, in this movie, is indeed classic.

3.  Children Of Men - King Crimson - The Court of the Crimson King:  This movie is totally under-rated when it comes to music.  Not only are there a ton of great uses of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday”, but they reach deep into the vault of psychedelia for this incredible tune, used as Clive Owen approaches the gate of what is basically a fortress.  The song creates, on it’s own, an atmosphere of apocalyptic foreboding.  Not only is this one of the best movies of the past ten years, this is one of the best songs of the past fifty.

2.  The Harder They Come - Toots And The Maytals - Pressure Drop:  This movie has the greatest soundtrack of any movie, ever.  And there are so many songs that could have made this list.  The scene where Toots and the Maytals are in the studio singing “Sweet and Dandy”, exuding the joy that a group can have recording great music.  The use of the Jimmy Cliff tunes “Sitting In Limbo”, “Many Rivers to Cross”, and “You Can Get It If You Really Want”.  And the title track, Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come”, is likely the greatest reggae song ever recorded.  Also amazing - the Slickers’ tune “Johnny Too Bad”, a song which reflects the movie as though it was written specifically for it.  But I am going with the scene where Jimmy Cliff chases a drug dealer down a reservoir tunnel, shooting at him to the sounds of “Pressure Drop”.  The most incongruous, yet the most effective, chase music you will ever hear.

1.  Office Space - Ghetto Boys - Still:  Again, a candidate for Best Soundtrack Ever.  A movie about cubicle-bound office workers set to some of the most hardcore gangsta rap in the world.  Seems strange, but boy, does it ever work.  And this song is the best one of them all, used as Peter, Michael and Samir take a photocopier out to a deserted field for a gangland-style beatdown.  As the hardcore, badass tune plays, they set to work destroying the copier.  Like so many gangland movies, where a character is getting beat down, the two reasonable guys at one point have to physically restrain their friend, who has lost it and goes after the copier with his bare hands.  There is a moment where Samir makes a subtle gesture with the baseball bat to stop Peter and Michael from attacking - Samir is basically saying “I got first here”.  A brilliant scene all around (recently spoofed in Family Guy, where Peter and Stewie recreate that entire scene as they destroy Peter’s “Surfin’ Bird” record - possibly the best use of music in a sitcom as well).

There are many others, and those are simply my personal favourites.  I welcome any other songs people might want to throw in here.  Movies and music go together so well, and it’s a thing of beauty when they come together this well.  My honourable mentions - “Okie From Muskogee” by Merle Haggard, from Platoon.  “White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, “These Days” by Nico from The Royal Tenenbaums, and “The Pusher” by Steppenwolf from Easy Rider.

Normally, I reserve tributes such as this one for actors such as Paul Newman or Charlton Heston who pass on.  But Michael Crichton has meant a lot to the movie world.  Even if his only book that got turned into a movie was Jurassic Park, he had a profound influence over the world of cinema.  When Crichton died, surprisingly, on Tuesday at the age of 66, I felt it was worthwhile going over his contribution to cinema.

I have always liked, and in many cases loved, Michael Crichton’s books.  For a mainstream, pop writer, his novels were incredibly well-crafted, well-researched and taut with suspense.  In many cases, they seemed almost as if they were written more as movies than as books, because as I read I could visualize the movie adaptation of the book.  One notable exception to this rule, however, was Jurassic Park.  When I read that book as a child, I could not picture the movie.  I loved the book, I read it about seven times during the year I was eleven, but no one had ever seen a movie like the one that would be made, and as such, how were we to picture it?

Like Stephen King, however, Crichton’s books created only a couple of great movies.  Most of his works were sadly disappointing when brought to the big screen.  Like King, this is not really Crichton’s fault, it is the fault of the directors who took those fine works and turned them into, say, Congo.  Here is a short list of a few significant Crichton-inspired movies, and their impact.

1.  Jurassic Park (1993). (**********10/10)  The best movie made out of a Crichton book, made from his best novel.  Steven Spielberg took what was a brilliant concept in genetic engineering (and theme parks) and created a movie the likes of which none of us had ever seen.  It was followed by The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, and got worse with each successive installment.  But both those sequels took elements from Crichton’s original novel, as well as from his own follow-up, The Lost World.  Scenes from the two books are scattered through the three movies.  The one thing I think Jurassic Park could have done better is if it had opened with the opening scene from the novel, where a kid on a beach gets attacked by an unknown creature, leading into the story.  But it seems apparent that Spielberg wanted to make sure the dinosaurs were contained on the island for the purposes of the film.  Oh - the film was about dinosaurs.  In case you have been living under a rock since 1993.

2.  The Andromeda Strain (1971).  (*********9/10)  The first one, the one that started the movies’ love affair with Crichton.  This is one of his books I read early on, right after I finished Jurassic Park, and at the age of eleven I just didn’t get it.  I revisited it years later, however, and I now think that The Andromeda Strain is one of the finest books I have read.  A deadly extra-terrestrial virus comes to Earth, with devastating results.  The film version was excellent, directed by Robert Wise and starring David Wayne and Kate Reid.  Makes Outbreak look like crap.  Well, moreso.

3.  The Great Train Robbery (1979).  (********8/10).  Not one of Crichton’s better books, The Great Train Robbery was a rather dry and clinical tale of the first hold-up of a train in England.  The movie, however, was a far more loose and interesting piece, starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.  Crichton himself adapted the novel to the screenplay, and directed the movie, and managed to make the movie better than his book.

4.  The 13th Warrior (1999).  (*****5/10).  A sub-par book in Crichton’s catalogue (Eaters of the Dead), with a movie to match.  Antonio Banderas is a warrior who must help a bunch of Vikings defend a village against marauding warriors who are even more barbaric and tough than the Vikings.  They’ll eat your skin!  Too bad they’re all so boring.

5.  Rising Sun (1993).  (****4/10).  A lot of people were excited about this - another Michael Crichton adaptation released directly after Jurassic Park.  It was a great book about race relations in business (and murder) between the Japanese and the Americans.  Then it was turned into a below-average action movie starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.  Crichton wrote the book with Sean Connery in mind as the elder businessman who understands the Japanese better than anyone.  I find it hard to believe that he wrote the other character with Wesley Snipes in mind.

6.  Disclosure (1994).  (***3/10).  What was a reasonably taut legal thriller of a book became a reasonably awful movie designed to cash in on Demi Moore’s hot-chick status following A Few Good Men and the equally-awful Indecent Proposal.  Also designed to cash in on Crichton’s cachet following Jurassic Park, and Michael Douglas’ status as the sexual-thriller leading man after Basic Instinct.  The movie attempts to turn sexual politics on it’s ear by making Moore the aggressive stalker in the office, sexually harassing Douglas.  But why anyone who looks like Demi Moore would want an aging Michael Douglas…I don’t know.  Sorry, Catherine Zeta-Jones.  I don’t get it.

7.  Sphere (1998).  (**2/10).  What was a really cool idea for a book becomes a really bad idea for a movie.  Frankly, this movie should have been awesome - it had the potential to become an underwater 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  Instead, it bowed to star power, with Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, and Sharon Stone mugging for the cameras for an hour and a half before finally coming to an ending that works terribly well in words, not so much on the screen.

8.  Congo (1995).  (*1/10).  A decent book about a long-lost tribe of mountain gorillas becomes one of the worst movies of all time.  How sad.  The novel was tense, interesting, and although not a classic, it was effective.  But this film adaptation was just laughable, making many B-movies look like works of genius in comparison.  Laura Linney seems to be the only one taking her role seriously, while her cast mates couldn’t be more obnoxious.  Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson are laugh-out-loud terrible, and the special effects range from pretty good to cheesy and ludicrious.  The plot, while it made perfect sense in the novel, is almost totally incomprehensible in the film.  Good gorillas vs. bad gorillas.  How awful.

Although there were clearly some bad movies made from the solid works of Michael Crichton, I will say this for the man - he directed one of the better adaptations himself - The Great Train Robbery - and in doing so, made sure he would be remembered more favourably in film history than Stephen King, whose directorial effort in Maximum Overdrive made even Congo look like Jurassic Park.

Also of note:  Crichton created the concept for the TV show E.R., and served as an executive producer on the series.  He wrote Timeline, a good book that was turned into a 2003 movie that I have not seen, and The Terminal Man, another book I’ve read that was turned into a 1974 movie I haven’t seen.  He was a screenwriter on several films that were not based on his books, among them Twister in 1996 and Coma in 1978.  And he will be missed.

Hollywood is shedding a few tears today.  Many people say Steve McQueen was the ultimate man’s man in the movies.  Others cast votes for John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood.  But not me.  As far as I’m concerned, the greatest man’s man in movie history passed away yesterday, September 26th, at the age of 83.  I must confess, although I have been a Newman fanatic for years, I didn’t expect this news to hit me so hard.  He had been battling cancer for years, and we all knew it was coming.  But even outside the movies, he still seemed like some kind of masculine, indestructible superman.  Even at the age of 80 he was still racing cars and living a very vital lifestyle.  Paul Newman can’t die!  He’s Cool Hand Luke, he’s a race car driver, he’s immortal!

And, in a very real way, the classy, genuine Paul Newman, like so many other great actors, is immortal.  John Wanye, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney - they will never be forgotten.  And neither will Newman.  Here are ten ways never to forget this incredible man, one of the greatest actors ever to appear on the silver screen:

10.    The Hudsucker Proxy:  The Coen Brothers’ first real attempt at screwball comedy.  A huge budget (for the Coens, at the time) and a terrific cast.  Tim Robbins is on his way upstairs to show Paul Newman, the corporate executive, his idea for a new children’s toy.  At the same time, Charles Durning, the company’s president, is flying out the boardroom window.  Newman sees an opportunity to install the dimwitted Robbins in Durning’s place, so he can take over the company.  Newman is delightful as the scheming, manipulative villain - the type Frank Capra could easily have created in the 40s.  Sidney J. Mussberger is one of Newman’s best roles.

9.    Road To Perdition:  Once again, Newman is a fairly bad guy in this one, playing an aging Irish crime boss.  His main hitman, Tom Hanks, has been his sort of surrogate son for many years.  But when Newman’s biological son, (Daniel Craig) decides to wipe out Hanks’ family, Hanks comes after them hard.  Jude Law also stars as a rival hitman sent to take out Hanks, and Newman is once again magnificent in a supporting role as the kindly yet dangerous John Rooney.

8.    The Color of Money:  The only Oscar Newman ever won.  Of course, he was really winning more for his entire body of work, and not specifically for this movie.  He is still tremendous, reprising his role as Fast Eddie Felson from the classic film The Hustler.  Taking young Tom Cruise under his wing, Newman manages to take the George C. Scott character from the original film, combine him with his own Felson character, and create an entirely new character.  He is going down the road toward becoming exactly the type of man who ruined him so many years earlier.  Newman conveys the seething turmoil within his character in a top-notch performance.

7.    The Towering Inferno:  Not the greatest movie of Newman’s career, but an excellent chance to see three of the greatest manly actors in history go toe-to-toe.  To toe.  Newman is the architect of a gigantic skyscraper, William Holden is the man who built that skyscraper, and Steve McQueen is the fire chief who gets called in when that skyscraper burns to the ground.  Fred Astaire and Faye Dunaway also star, but it’s the heroic men who make this movie resonate to this day.  McQueen, Holden, and of course Newman.  Doug Roberts belongs on a list of Newman’s great roles.

6.    Slap Shot:  Certainly one of Newman’s most beloved movies, and one of his most memorable roles.  The greatest sports movie of all time, Slap Shot is so much more than just the Hanson Brothers and Denis Lemieux and the play-by-play guys.  It is Newman, through and through.  Newman just oozes effortless charm as he sleeps with women, inspires his team, and does what he can to hold a failing hockey club together.  But there is something deeper going on within his character, a sort of resignation, sadness and pain that he balances perfectly with the humour of the hockey fighting.  Reggie Dunlop is the most memorable fictional character in the history of sports movies, thanks to Paul Newman.

5.    The Verdict:  An alcoholic loser of a lawyer (Newman) finds a case that could mean either his redemption or his destruction.  Frankly, there isn’t much difference between The Verdict and other, similar lawyer-and-courtroom dramas.  Erin Brockovich, or A Civil Action.  The biggest difference is Newman himself.  As the drunken bum lawyer, he is simply stunning.  A familiar story is elevated to greatness by not only one of the greatest performances of Newman’s career, but one of the greatest performances in movies.  Ever.  Paul Newman makes Frank Galvin an iconic figure.

4.    The Sting:  A far more lighthearted entry than The Verdict or even Slap Shot, The Sting is the ultimate, well, sting movie.  Newman’s second brilliant pairing with Robert Redford, he manages to infuse his character with more than just light comedic silliness as he and Redford set up the ultimate sting to nail the local racketeer, Doyle Donnegan (played by Robert Shaw).  Newman once again plays a drunk, dragging himself out of his stupor to get Donnegan.  Henry Gondorff is one of Paul Newman’s greatest characters.

3.    Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid:  Newman’s first magnificent collaboration with Redford and director George Roy Hill (who later directed The Sting as well).  One of the greatest western movies ever made, Redford and Newman once again inject humanity and pathos into some pretty light fare.  And is there a greater final image than the two of them bursting out of that doorway, guns raised?  Paul Newman, for ever more, will be Butch Cassidy.

2.    The Hustler:  Again, Newman puts in one of the greatest performances in movie history.  A young pool hustler taken under the wing of the malicious and sadistic George C. Scott (also one of the great performances in history), Newman creates memorable moment after memorable moment.  There may be no greater scene in his entire career than the one where he takes on Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), in a marathon pool game.  There is no one else on earth who could have done what Newman did in this movie with the character of Fast Eddie Felson.

1.    Cool Hand Luke:  The ultimate guy movie.  The ultimate prison movie.  The ultimate fight-the-system movie.  And the ultimate Paul Newman movie.  This is one of my all-time favourites, I watch it at least once every six months.  There has never been a better tough-guy movie made, and I include all of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood’s oeuvre in that sentence.  This is Newman’s best film, his best performance, and Luke Jackson is one of the top five characters ever created by anyone, in any movie, ever.  If you want to remember Paul Newman, watch this movie today.  And then once every six months for the rest of your life.

Hollywood has lost one of it’s great icons, one of it’s genuinely good people, and one of the greatest method actors who ever lived.  RIP, Paul Newman.

I cam across an interesting bunch of statistics today.  Every year, there is a list of “highest paid movie stars”.  And the usual suspects are on the list, and it’s a boring list.  For my purposes here though, I will reprint that list for 2007:

1.  Will Smith (80 million bucks)
2.  Johnny Depp (75 million)
3.  Mike Myers (55)
4.  Eddie Murphy (55)
5.  Cameron Diaz (50)
6.  Leonardo DiCaprio (45)
7.  Bruce Willis (41)
8.  Ben Stiller (40)
9.  Nicholas Cage (38)
10.  Keira Knightley (32)
11.  Will Ferrell (31)
12.  Adam Sandler (30)
13.  Jennifer Aniston (27)

OK.  Boring list.  I know it.  Only Will Smith, however, seems worth the money.  He is the only actor in history to have 8 straight movies earn more than 100 million dollars each.  Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley are coasting off the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and Nicholas Cage seems to be there solely by virtue of National Treasure.  But several others are odd.  Eddie Murphy?  Mike Myers?  Their latest films are dreadful, and Meet Dave and The Love Guru will be lucky to earn 55 million dollars combined!  Whic brings us to the actually interesting list.  Here is a list of actors who are worth the money they are paid.  (For example:  if the number is 14.73 for Vince Vaughn, that means that for every dollar he is paid, he brings in fourteen dollars and seventy-three cents of gross income.)

1.  Vince Vaughn (14.73)
2.  Tobey Maguire (13.44)
3.  Julia Roberts (13.19)
4.  Brad Pitt (12.73)
5.  Naomi Watts (12.16)
6.  Matt Damon (12.16)
7.  George Clooney (11.56)
8.  Jennifer Aniston (10.48)
9.  Hugh Jackman (9.90)
10.  Ben Stiller (9.50)

I note that only Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller make both lists, indicating that perhaps they are paid based on their talents, which are considerable, but that their mass appeal outweighs their talent.  Which is entirely believable.  Pitt, Clooney and Julia Roberts appear here because they all took big pay cuts to appear in the Oceans Seventy-Eight series of movies, which all did major bank.  Julia Roberts paid back $32.50 for every dollar she made on Oceans Twelve.  Now a quick rundown of some of the other big, bankable stars:

Will Smith - $5.64
Jim Carrey - $4.11
Tom Cruise - $3.99

AND…

Nicole Kidman - $1.01

That means that for every dollar Nicole Kidman is paid, the studios make one dollar and one cent.  ONE CENT PROFIT.  Perhaps it’s time for a pay cut?  This is the second year in a row Kidman has been the worst earner in Hollywood.  Mostly because she demands a huge payday for movies that flop.  The Invasion actually cost the studios $2.70 for every dollar they paid Kidman.  You would think that for that kind of money, she would have at least put a little effort into the role.

All this wonderful information was put together by Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/22/star-salary-roi-biz-media-cz_dp_ph_0722payback.html and they had a specific method to rank each star.  It was all about their last three movies, and they had to earn at least 5 million dollars to appear in one of those three.  Which means that people like Seth Rogen, who would surely be tops on the list, did not make it based on these criteria.  Go to that link to see exactly how they came up with the rankings.  For those of you who just want to see the rankings, here are the rest:

11.  Renee Zellwegger (9.49)
12.  Kate Winslett (9.48)
13.  Reese Witherspoon (8.91)
14.  Jodie Foster (8.59)
15.  Robert DeNiro (8.34)
16.  Denzel Washington (7.95)
17.  Angelina Jolie (7.16)
18.  Russell Crowe (6.88)
19.  Bruce Willis (6.68)
20.  Johnny Depp (6.51)
21.  Will Smith (5.64)
22.  Sandra Bullock (5.59)
23.  Tom Hanks (5.51)
24.  Leonardo DiCaprio (5.46)
25.  Adam Sandler (5.08)
26.  Cate Blanchett (4.97)
27.  Will Ferrell (4.67)
28.  Drew Barrymore (4.38)
29.  Nicolas Cage (4.16)
30.  Jim Carrey (4.11)
31.  Jennifer Lopez (4.10)
32.  Cameron Diaz (4.03)
33.  Tom Cruise (3.99)
34.  Jennifer Garner (3.62)
35.  Nicole Kidman (1.01)

Sydney Pollack, one of the great directors in movie history, passed away yesterday from cancer at the age of 73.  Also a great producer and actor, you can see him on the big screen right now performing in Made of Honor and on DVD giving a fantastic performance in Michael Clayton.  Cynical Cinema pays tribute to Sydney Pollack with a list of his must-watch films.

 1.  The Interpreter (2005) - Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman both give exemplary performances in this espionnage story about a U.N. interpreter (Kidman) who overhears an assassination plot.  The must-see moment:  The scene on the bus, when many of the characters, including a terrorist bomber, come together on the same bus at the same time.  One of the most tense (and intense) moments in recent cinema, worthy of Hitchcock.  Pollack produced and directed this terrific movie.

2.  The Firm (1993) - Say what you will about Tom Cruise (and I will agree with much of what you say), this is one of his finest films, and one of the only decent John Grisham book adaptations.  Also great in this movie are Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris, Gary Busey and of course Gene Hackman.  That scene between Hackman and Tripplehorn near the end is great.  Pollack produced and directed.

3.  Out of Africa (1985) - Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, both close to their best, in a sweeping epic romance.  Pollack won Best Director for this one, and it also took Best Pictuer honours, among the 11 Oscars for which it was nominated.  David Watkin aids Pollack considerably here with some of the best cinematography you will ever see in a film.

4.  Three Days of the Condor (1975) - Pollack directs this political espionnage thriller which opens with one of the most memorable film openings of all time, as Robert Redford, a CIA operative, returns from lunch to find his entire office assassinated.  An intensely political film, Three Days of the Condor took on the CIA, Watergate, the press and the Pentagon Papers.  Often overlooked, but still a great film.

5.  Jeremiah Johnston (1972) - Robert Redford again, in this Pollack-directed wilderness western.  Many comparisons have been made between this and Dances With Wolves,as Redford is a man alone in the wilderness, befriending the native people in the area, until a horrific final act sees him exact brutal vengeance against the same people, leading to a final moment of questionable redemption.  A magnificent movie.

6.  They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) - The movie that put Pollack on the map, he wrote, directed and produced this tale of a bizarre dance marathon gone awry.  Jane Fonda also found her star on the rise with the film, as it put her on the map as an actress as well.  She is terrific as Gloria, a woman who finds the worst in her being brought out by the prospect of $1,500.00 in prize money in this two-month-plus dance marathon.  Strange, but pretty darn good.  Gig Young is terrific too as Rocky, the irritating emcee of the contest.  This was nominated for nine Oscars.

7.  The Way We Were (1973) - More Redford, this time with Barbra Streisand.  Cynical Cinema must admit that this is one we haven’t seen, but from all accounts it is an all-time classic.  Streisand won a Best Actress Oscar.

8.  Tootsie (1982) - Pollack’s tour de force, and his best movie.  Dustin Hoffman gives yet another defining performance as a struggling actor who finds that the best roles are being given to women, and so he dresses up as one in order to land a dream role.  Funny, sharp, and incredibly perceptive, Tootsie was one of the first, and still the best, of it’s kind.  Men dressing up like women for laughs is now commonplace, but usually in movies like Big Momma’s House and Norbit.  Which indicates how great Pollack had to be to prevent this movie from falling into that sinkhole.  Only Mrs. Doubtbfire since then has even come close to capturing the tone and the intelligence of this film.

 Sydney Pollack was the Scotty Bowman of the film world.  Always working with a star-studded cast, just as Bowman always worked with star-studded teams.  And the knock on Bowman has always been that anyone could win with those players.  In movies, not anyone can craft a great movie simply by casting great actors.  Pollack was a genius in that he not only got the best out of those actors, he made sure that they had something to do that could elevate the films from decent to memorable to classic.  On top of that, he was a fantastic actor as well - just look at his incredible performance in last year’s Michael Clayton.  He will be missed.

This is not a top-fourteen list. It is just fourteen movies that are well worth checking out. I have not seen all the best movies of 2008, because I tend to wait for DVD, and therefore I have yet to see No Country For Old Men, Sweeny Todd or There Will Be Blood. But I don’t know of a single film critic who doesn’t have a bunch of year-end lists, I have decided to do a couple myself, since I have been pretending to be a film critic for some time now. These are not in order, they are just fourteen movies well worth renting on DVD this year.

Ratatouille: A rat with an incredible palate and cooking ability becomes the top chef in Paris. The best animated movie in years, this one courtesy of Brad Bird, the genius behind such quality films as The Incredibles. The brilliance of Ratatouille comes from two things. First of all, the movie does not dumb itself down for the benefit for the children at whom it’s aimed. The dialogue, while not “adult” dialogue, and not filled with those clever double entendres that fly over the head of children while adults snicker in the audience. It assumes children are capable of understanding multi-syllabic words and actual realistic sentences. The second thing it does extremely well is the animation itself. The rat is cute, like all main characters in animated movies, but it is also very rat-like. You always get the sense that people would indeed be freaked out to see this animal in their kitchen, and therefore everything else falls into place in ringing true. Well, as true as a rat-chef can be.

The City Of Violence: A Korean action movie by Seung-Wan Ryoo. A cop, Tae-Su, assigned to the organized crime unit returns to his hometown for the funeral of a high school friend. There, he reunites with some old friends, but something feels wrong about his friend’s death. Tae-Su begins to investigate, which leads him through several bloody conflicts and, of course, to one final bloody battle. There is nothing new in City of Violence. Several themes are very central to Asian cinema, and one of them is the idea of childhood friends who went their separate ways but who are united by a certain bond. Another is one man against an entire gang fight scenes. The City of Violence is no exception, and it even tips it’s hat to an older movie, The Warrior, during one of these epic fight scenes. What sets this film apart is it’s acting and it’s atmosphere. In American cinema for the most part, the best actors do dramas and serious movies, and leave the action films to the flavour-of-the-month actor. In Asian cinema, the best actors are the ones who do action flicks, because for the most part those are the best movies. This is one of them.

Eastern Promises: Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg are the best actor-director tandem working today. Mortensen is fantastic as usual, as is Naomi Watts and Armin Mueller-Stahl. This is the best movie I saw on DVD this year. Russian mob. Tattoos. Violence and terrific acting. What more do you need?

Knocked Up: A fat, lazy guy who resembles me in many many ways gets an unreasonably hot Katherine Heigl pregnant. Hilarity ensues. The best kind of chick flick in that it will make chicks who watch it irritated, while it will make guys split their sides with laughter.

Superbad: The same guys who made Knocked Up made the funniest high-school-loser-teenage-sex movie of the last fifteen years. Maybe ever. Some of the funniest performances and best dialogue in a movie this year. McLovin rules!

Rescue Dawn: Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp drama starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, directed by Werner Herzog. Bale is one of the best actors working today, Herzog has made some seriously classic films, but Steve Zahn? Bandidas, Saving Silverman Steve Zahn? His performance is the surprise of the year.

The Bourne Ultimatum: Best of the Bourne series, and that’s saying a lot. The most intense scene in a movie lately was the one where Matt Damon guides a reporter through a crowd via cell phone as the bad guys close in on him. Heart-racing, tremendously fun and exciting.

The Host: Coolest monster movie in a long time. Korean as well, this one is excellent, creepy, and yet still has time to wink at the audience and put in some terrible monster-movie bad moments, like the one where the monster appears for the first time at a beach and eats everyone. Hilarious. And awesome.

Away From Her: Sarah Polley has always been a great actress - yes, even in Road To Avonlea, which my mom watched religiously, but which made me angry as a child. Now she proves she is a very good director as well, with this film about Alzheimers. Julie Christie just won a Golden Globe for her role as the Alzheimers-stricken elderly lady, and deservedly so. Gordon Pinsent, for some reason, has not been mentioned in any critic’s circles for his protrayal of her suffering husband, but he certainly deserves very high praise for his performance as well.

Hot Fuzz: The funniest movie of the year. Only people (the Shaun of the Dead people) who absolutely love all movies, especially brainless action flicks, could have made a movie that seems so familiar, yet so new at the same time. The scene at the end when Nick Frost fires his gun into the air and yells “aaaarrrrghhh!” made me laugh harder than any other movie moment this past year.

3:10 To Yuma: A fantastic adaptation of an old, forgotten western is bang on. Not a perfect movie, by any means, but terrifically entertaining. Christian Bale and especially Russell Crowe are electrifying, both deserve award consideration for this one.

Sicko: Michael Moore’s look at the American health care system is funny, eye-opening, and devastatingly tragic. Say what you will about Michael Moore, this man knows how to make an audience laugh, knows how to tug at their heart strings, and the fact that he lobbies for change while doing so makes him all the more important as a filmmaker.

Grindhouse: This is actually two movies. Which adds up to fourteen overall. Death Proof is just more Quentin Tarantino being in love with making movies, and that is just blissful to watch. Kurt Russell is wonderful, and that stunt girl who rides the car is fantastic. The second movie, Planet Terror, is not as great, but is still an awfully fun ride through the world of zombie attacks and machine-gun legs. Bruce Willis makes an appearance. That makes it well worth while.

I went into Rogers near my house yesterday to pick up this week’s new releases, only to find out they were shutting down that store. Everything was off the shelves, and being sold off cheap. So I took advantage of the opportunity to beef up my terrible-monster-movie collection. I picked up Boa vs. Python, Frankenfish, and Attack of the Sabretooth (which is not to be confused with the “superior” movie, Sabretooth, released some years before). I then sat down to be entertained by ridiculous badness and aggressive mediocrity. I watched Frankenfish first, which hit all of the gnre buttons dead on. Topless female nudity, mostly gratuitous (and none involving the stars, of course). A pointless romance between the only two characters who could possibly get together, the bad-ass local guy who knows the swamp and can kill the evil fish by himself…it was all there. The awesome badness of the movie was sealed when the attractive black guy and the Chinese girl were clearly not going to get together, and they meet up with a very attractive black girl whose white boyfriend was an obnoxious sissy…these movies still think that only people of the same race can hook up properly. Otherwise, the audience has too much to think about.

Of course, this girl (and those around her) is unrealistically hot for someone who has been brought up on a houseboat deep in the swamp, and somehow has perfect hair and makeup the whole time. Of course, there are also the customary bad guys too - cowboy-type rich executives, the people who genetically created these mutant Frankenfish to begin with, who will swoop down to the swamp, attempt to capture it alive, and get their just deserts for being so evil. Of course, when the heroes finally finish the job, they laugh and kiss each other as though forty-three other people have not just died in the carnage. And, of course, there is one final SCARE at the end. This is the monster movie formula, and it is fantastic. The only thing they were missing was a group of sorority girls and fraternity boys who happen to get caught up in the chaos. Which brings me to the next movie…

Attack of the Sabretooth involves sorority girls and fraternity boys who have been thrown together and dumped on an island for the purposes of completing some sort of scavenger hunt. Why this island, why a scaveneger hunt, dropped off by whom, why only five of them, we will never know. Every ethnicity and stereotype is represented. The black girl who is good with guns. The oriental guy who is good with computers. The ditzy blonde big-chested cheerleader and the muscle-bound jock she secretly lusts after. (Despite her assertions that she hates him.) And, of course, the goth chick who so desperately insists on not being judged. At the same time, the evil bad guys who genetically created the monster sabretooth tigers and want to recapture them alive are hosting a meeting of investors on this same island to show them the sabretooth menaces. When people start dying, the evil bad guy in charge of course tries to keep that quiet, so it does not scare off the investors, while the tough-chick security guard who’s been there and seen it all goes renegade to bring down the big cats herself.

There are a few variations on the cliches in Attack of the Sabretooth. There are TWO evil bad guys, scheming against each other, and…oh! They’re brothers! Who hate each other! Even though one is clearly American and the other clearly British, they are brothers. There are three sabretooth tigers who get loose, a male a female, and, bizarrely, a genetic freak. In most monster movies, the freakish genetic abnormality is three times the size, three times the fury, and shows up only at the end…blah blah blah. In Attack of the Sabretooth, this weird cat does indeed show up at the end, but it’s special freakish nature is such that it doesn’t have back legs, only a pile of jelly coming out of it’s butt. So it drags itself around with it’s front legs, and kills no one. Oh, and no boobs at all. Another cliche of these movies remains intact, however. The one that says that there must be dozens of rooms in the building, each with generically labeled items like “flammable gas” canisters, which can all be used in clever ways to kill the predators. Then the movie ends, with one big FINAL SCARE, but this time, it is in what would appear to be the middle of the movie.

Attack of the Sabretooth is a Jurassic Park rip-off with hilariously bad animation and even worse acting. It is terrifically indicative of the genre. However, Boa vs. Python is something else entirely. Oh, sure, it has it’s share of totally gratuitous boobs, it has unrealistic creatures attacking unrealistic humans, and various attractive young people who band together to fight the good fight against the bad beast. But this time, it takes place in a CITY! And the epic final battle is not between the beast and the two surviving characters who are meant to hook up, but between two of the monsters themselves! The boa and the python, of course. This time there are government agents involved, and the animation is slightly better than usual. Jamie Bergman shows up as a marine biologist. The least convincing scientist since Denise Richards played Christmas Jones in that Bond movie. And the boa apparently eats in a bird-like motion and growls like a…sabretooth tiger.

If you want a really good monster movie, rent Jaws, or The Host, or…ummm…something else. These are the bottom-of-the-barrel, worst-movies-ever type of monster flicks, the kind where they purposely insert breaks in the film where commercials could go, knowing it will likely appear only on late-night TV, and that way they don’t have to re-edit the movie once for TV and once for video. They are staggeringly awful, and the only thing that could make me enjoy them more would be the inclusion of Steven Seagal.

I just wrote a blog about fourteen great movies. I have decided to include an extra bad movie here, because I want to make the point that Hollywood makes far more bad movies than good ones. I really wanted to write about twenty-eight bad movies, but I wasn’t feeling nearly masochistic enough. Two things - much like the great movies I talked about, the bad movies list will not be complete. There are many bad movies I have yet to see. License to Wed, I assume, is awful. Likewise Good Luck Chuck. But I have not seen them, and so I will not comment. Also, films like Boa vs. Python and Mammoth do not count, since they are not movies that big studios attempt to force on the general public. In order to rent and watch these films, one has to be a specific kind of masochist. The following films are the kind that real people may well have watched, hoping for something good, but then they were insulted and assaulted with crap. In no particular order, here goes.

Norbit: Eddie Murphy plays three characters, which worked in The Nutty Professor. This time, every character is an offensive and racist stereotype, not one of the characters is funny, and the movie is painful. A hint to filmmakers. If you can’t find a real fat lady to be in your movie, and you have to dress up one of your actors to be a fat lady, it is likely because the jokes about fat ladies are so offensive and in such poor taste that no real fat lady would ever subject herself to the movie. Neither should the audience.

I Know Who Killed Me: The worst performance of the year was turned in by Lindsay Lohan as a bad-girl stripper. The second-worst performance of the year was turned in by Lindsay Lohan as a goody-two-shoes high school girl. Both were in this movie.

The Number 23: Well…at least it made me laugh. This was one of the worst-thought-out, horribly done “thriller” movies of the year. The best thing about it is that it was so incredibly awful, but the people making it really didn’t know how bad it was. That can make something cross over from just a disaster into crappy camp. Think Showgirls.

The Reaping: Hilary Swank either wins an Oscar or she is in a terrible movie. This is a terrible movie, and she got no Oscar. The biblical plagues should really have ended in the destruction of the print of this movie.

Because I Said So: Diane Keaton, what happened? Mandy Moore, I think someday you could be good, but what happened? Mandy Moore likely IS good. But she has never in her life appeared in a good movie. I know for a fact that Diane Keaton is good. I saw Annie Hall. Watching Because I Said So for me was like walking into a theatre hoping for Annie Hall. Then, before I got to my seat, someone kicked me in the nuts and stole my popcorn.

Wild Hogs: There is nothing remotely funny about Wild Hogs. But it made a lot of money at the box office this year, because the names bring people in. Travolta, Macy, Tim Allen. No, I’m serious. Tim Allen is a box-office draw. No, really. I mean it. People like watching him! This is a high-school after school special with big name actors and motorcycles. Insipid.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: A long, running gay joke, that is never funny, and offensive, and then tries not to be offensive by preaching the gospel of love thy neighbour and don’t be homophobic. Ridiculous, stupid, and boring as hell.

Rush Hour 3: Chris Tucker just opening his mouth is not funny. Jackie Chan punching him in the mouth to shut him up WOULD be funny. This does not happen in Rush Hour 3. Therefore, Rush Hour 3 is not funny.

Georgia Rule: Lindsay Lohan flashes her privates at some mean girls. She tries to run someone down with her truck. She sleeps with everyone. The makers of this movie read about all of this in the tabloids, and thought Lohan would be perfect for this role, since the girl she plays does ALL of that. But they were wrong. Lindsay Lohan is perfect for nothing. Except being in tabloids.

Epic Movie: The worst movie of the year. Maybe, just maybe, the worst of any year. Gross-out humour that finds the gross but forgets the humour. Just being disgusting isn’t funny. It is disgusting. And just recreating a scene or character from a famous movie does not spoof that movie. You have to actually do something funny with it. Epic movie does nothing funny. With anything.

Spiderman 3: Peter Parker and Mary Jane Whatsherface spend the third consecutive movie carefully avoiding communication with each other, and making sure they did not say the one thing that would have solved all their problems. Like, “that Harry guy is trying to kill me”. That would have made things easier, complicated the movie much less, and spared us all that cheesy and lame romantic intrigue garbage. Which would have left us with still one, possibly two, too many villains, and a boring story with great special effects.

Happily N’Ever After: There are (I hope) producers in Hollywood who don’t think that kids are essentially stupid. Witness Ratatouille, which was smart and funny and charming. Happily N’Ever After proves that some producers really think kids will be entertained by absolutely anything. All the intelligence and charm of a third-rate grade-four class clown.

Pirates of the Carribean 3: Enough already! I believe this movie may have been eleven hours long. Any movie that has Chow Yun-Fat, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush and a cameo by Keith Richards, and yet can still put an audience to sleep, must really have had some bad writers with absolutely nothing to say. For eleven hours.

Premonition: Sandra Bullock lives her own, scary, Groundhog Day. This movie is so desperate to make sense that it cares more about that than about being entertaining. Therefore, we are so un-entertained, that we no longer care if it makes sense. The smarter folk among us might even turn off the film before the end, not even caring about the ending. I was not that smart.

Resident Evil: Extinction: The third, and probably not final, installment in what may someday be known as the worst trilogy in history. But probably not. It will have a fourth installment, and therefore not be a trilogy, and therefore have to settle for being the second-worst movie series of all time, behind Friday the 13th.

Honorable mention to Evan Almighty, The Hallowe’en remake, Underdog, and Mr. Woodcock. I have mercifully been spared watching such fare as Hostel II, Captivity, Delta Farce and Who’s Your Caddy, at least thus far.

It took me a while to warm up to Heath Ledger. He threw me off early as the latest Hollywood pretty-boy, with films like Ten Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s tale, but over time I grew to appreciate his talents. It’s awfully sad that, at age 28, he died in his prime, as he was making a case for being one of the best new actors in the world. Here are five Heath Ledger movies that are well worth watching:

5. The Patriot. Ledger plays Mel Gibson’s son, in this civil war version of Braveheart. Not a great movie, but there are some seriously great scenes, like the one where the cannonball takes that guy’s head off (best seen in HD) and the scene where Gibson rescues Ledger from a group of soldiers as though he were Rambo.

4. The Brothers Grimm. Ledger and Matt Damon play the title characters in a bizarre but often entertaining take on the fables that made the Brothers Grimm popular. They go from town to town as hucksters, pretending to rid towns of evil spirits and ogres and goblins and so forth, until of course they run into a real evil spirit. Again, not a great movie, but some solid moments.

3. A Knight’s Tale. Mostly lame movie with a fine performance by Ledger as a young, poor nobody who wants to ascend to the top of the world through jousting. A fine classic rock soundtrack and the gorgeous Shannyn Sossamon make the movie more bearable, but Ledger somehow rises above most of the cheesy teen-movie type dialogue and scenarios to show that he is a fine actor.

2. Candy. A harsh, freaky story about two junkies who are addicted to heroin. Abby Cornish is also great in this one, and Ledger gives the finest performance of his career as Dan, a poet who can’t separate his love for heroin from his love for Candy (Cornish). Geoffrey Rush is terrific as the man who both enables the couple by providing them with the drugs, and then tries to help them when it is obviously too late.

1. Monster’s Ball. Not Ledger’s best performance, but the best movie he in which he appeared. Halle Berry’s best performance, however, and Billy Bob Thornton does some excellent work as well. Ledger plays his son, and the hatred between the two causes some serious tension and great dramatic moments.

Not included are Brokeback Mountain, which was overrated, and Ten Things I Hate About You, Ledger’s first starring role, because it was dreadful. Also good: Ned Kelly and Lords of Dogtown.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a sequel to Elizabeth, which was a very good movie from 1998 that netted Cate Blanchett her first Oscar nomination. I suppose Oscar feels as though they ought to nominate her again, if her first performance in the same role was Academy-Award-worthy, then so too must this one be, right? Wrong. Not that Blanchett is bad. But last year, Helen Mirren was exquisite in her role as this very same queen, Elizabeth the First. And Mirren showed exactly what that role should be. She defined it. And one of the main reasons is - and much as I hate it when actresses do this - they uglied her up. If history tells us anything through pictures about Queen Elizabeth I, it is that she was fairly ugly. Mirren put on a fake nose and made herself look less attractive than she actually is. Charlize Theron did the same for Monster, and that was OK too. They were both playing real people. Real, ugly, people. Cate Blanchett is not ugly. She is, in fact, striking and beautiful. That this is historically inaccurate is insignificant. But if she were to look like Helen Mirren did, it would add a certain weight to the role that is just not present here.

Oh sure, she’s good. In fact, she’s great, and has been in every movie in which she has appeared in her illustrious career. But deserving of an Oscar nod she is not. Aside from the occasional mood swing and enraged outburst, little is required of Blanchett here except to have a pale face and appear queenly. The movie itself is not that good either. The first one was a breath of fresh air, it looked like something fairly new when I saw it back in the 90s. But now this sequel feels like just another period piece, like Becoming Jane which was also just released, and countless others. “Period piece” basically means people dress up in old-timey clothes and talk old-timey talk and do stuff that must have happened in old-timey times. Some are magnificent, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is not. There is of course, the prerequisite love story, this one between Blanchett and Clive Owen, who plays the famous adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. Owen is decent in that role as well, bringing charm and old-timey manliness to the role, and Geoffrey Rush is terrific as always in his supporting role, that of Sir Francis Walsingham. But the whole movie feels a little forced.

And when it finally ends, and there is a bit of action, it feels tacked on, and too-little-too-late. The rest of the film had just plain bored me by then, and I didn’t care what happened to our heroes. Elizabeth: The Golden Age does what a period piece should do - have great costumes and convey the feel of that time period. But it does little else. And so does Cate Blanchett.

I have been attempting to watch as many Oscar-nominated movies as possible in the week leading up to the Big Event, but I have managed only to see those that are on DVD. And I have seen everything that is on DVD so far that is up for an award. Which means I have still missed out on dozens of films. I have seen all the Best Actor movies except for the likely winner, There Will Be Blood. I have seen only two of the Best Picture nominees, No Country For Old Men and Michael Clayton. In point of fact, the only categories where I have seen all five nominees are Sound Editing, where one of them is Transformers, and makeup, where one of them is Norbit. And I have seen only three of the Best Actress nominees. So far, I am rooting for Julie Christie to win Best Actress for Away From Her, simply because it’s slightly better than Marion Cotillard’s job in La Vie En Rose. But really, I am hoping for Anyone But Cate Blanchett This Year. She will certainly win others in her career, since she has that Meryl Streep thing going for her - she will be nominated for every movie she does for the rest of time - and she may well win Best Supporting for I’m Not There (another film that I regret to say I have yet to see), but she does not deserve it for this one. At least there’s a category for Costume Design. Oh, the prestige!

Speaking of costume design, and by extension period pieces, here is a brief list of the ten best period pieces ever made (and by brief, I mean ten items long):

10. The Piano (1993)
9. Raise The Red Lantern (1991)
8. Once Upon A Time in America (1984)
7. The Seventh Seal (1957)
6. Rashomon (1951)
5. The Duellists (1977)
4. Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003)
3. Once Upon A Time In China (1991)
2. The Untouchables (1987)
1. The Seven Samurai (1954)

Hmm…two Robert DeNiro, two Harvey Keitel, two Toshiro Mifune. Maybe I need to diversify my taste some. But anyone who insists that Titanic should be on that list should be kicked in the leg.