And the winner is...!

In my never-ending quest to rid my life of disinterest and boredom, and revel in the the shiny, new, untried and quirky, I hauled my friend, Billie, to a 12 hour movie marathon of the five nominees for 2008 Best Picture Oscar.

Yes. TWELVE hours. I said, I meant it, I did it.

So there.

And you know what? It's not something I would do every week or even every month, but there is something undeniably satisfying about sitting in a dark theater with a good friend, a bunch of strangers and free popcorn refills from 11 AM until 11 PM watching the flickering glow of light hitting celluloid.

Having thus survived this challenge, I feel uniquely qualified to comment intelligently and articulately on the chances I believe each film has of winning the Academy Award. Here goes:

MICHAEL CLAYTON: Wow. What a pleasant shock. I'd been expecting another "Erin Brocovich", which was why I didn't go to see it in the first place. Not even remotely close. And as a not-crazy-gaga-over-George-Clooney-fan, I gotta say, George is actually a good actor...and not looking too bad, either, I might add.

The story was fast moving, albeit slightly confusing at times (but to their credit, they tried to clear things up as quickly as possible), and held my interest from start to finish. As a lawyer, there were many scenes I had a rueful inside laugh at, but even those were understandable enough that the non-legal audience-goer could appreciate what was meant. The characters were all flawed, although there were clearly defined Morality Paths that put them more on the side of "right" and "wrong". I could go on, but there are four more movies to discuss. In my opinion, MICHAEL CLAYTON has a legitimate and justifiable reason for its nomination, but I do not believe it will win simply because of the overwhelming popularity of two of its competitors: THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I certainly hope that Clooney at least got the nod for Best Actor, although I don't think he will win that for the same reasons.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Daniel Day-Lewis? Perfect 19th century oil prospector. I don't think anyone else could have been better for this role. He absolutely owned it. Wore it like a skin. No doubt about it. Another nod for Best Actor absolutely deserved here. The movie itself, on the other hand, was one of the most disjointed, confused, poorly written?/directed?/edited? things I've ever seen. It started in one place, then hit a point where it could go in three or four different directions, chose one, followed it for a while, then doubled back and went off on another tangent, hit another fork in the road, chose a direction (sort of), abandoned it, jumped onto a plane and tried to pick up the thread of the first storyline a day late and a dollar short. The ending was abrupt, convoluted, contrived and unsatisfying. It was almost as if someone looked at the entire mess, realized that it needed to be in theaters in 72-hours, and took "The Sopranos" method of ending to heart. "Dude, just end it. There is no clean way to tie this up and have it make sense. Tell people to just read the damn book and stop looking for answers from Hollywood!"

Because of the Emperor's New Clothes approach to media, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a hot and heavy front runner for Best Picture. Not because it deserves to be, but because "if it's confusing, it's probably all metaphorical and everyone else is looking around and nodding, so they must all understand it and I don't want to be the stupid one, so I'm going to pretend I get it and talk about how brilliant it is!" Yeah. About that. Milk Chan doesn't do the Emperor's New Clothes thing. She is all about looking at some naked dude and saying, "Dude...did you know you're all like, naked, and stuff?" So Thumbs Up for Daniel Day, Thumbs Down for the flick, but no surprised look here if it takes home the gold.

ATONEMENT: I expected this movie to suck. I wasn't disappointed. The only reason it's even on the list if because it's a period piece, and people feel obliged to say that period pieces are automatically masterpieces. I think it has something to do with the swelling, epic music or something. Anyway, it sucked, but it got its obligatory nomination and that is all it will get. Cross this off your list of has-a-chances.

JUNO: Didn't think I would like this, either. I did. Cute movie, although Ellen Page looks looks and sounds like Jeanine Garafalo (at ages 14 and 43, respectively), instantly making her visually too young and spiritually too old to be the character she was playing. NOBODY outside of HollywoodLand is THAT cool when they're a geeky little off-beat freak in high school. Nobody. While it made for an amusing time, and held your interest from start to finish, it relied on far more than "just a little" suspension of disbelief. I really don't know why it made the list other than they needed a quirky indie film to show how cool the nominating committee is and how they are totally not slaves to the big studios. (We'll ignore the fact that the big studios all back these indie productions these days.) Put this on the ATONEMENT list. No way will it win.

and, finally, we come to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. This was less convoluted than BLOOD, but not terribly less so. Again, hyper-metaphorical. Again, a whole lot of "but, wait a minute...who are these guys? And who left all the heroin there? And where did those guys come from? And what happened to the black dog in the desert? And WTF???!!!" Interesting? Yes. Confusing? Yes. Allegorical? Definitely. Contender? Absolutely. Justifiably? Yeah...no.

It is my considered opinion (and I want to get this in quick before the choices are actually made) that either BLOOD or OLD MEN will win, but I would really like to see CLAYTON win simply because it was what a good movie should be...a plot, realistic characters who are neither totally good or totally bad, motivation, conflict, action, reaction, climax, resolution. Bon chance, George!