Alties and shorts.

A day before the Independent Spirit Awards are parceled out and two days before we learn five seconds later than Billy Crystal who's won which Oscars, Alternet unveils the winners of the Alties: "The battle for cinematic domination in the 2004 Altie Awards was fierce, with a field of movies as diverse as any in recent memory," announce the editors. The winner of the "Big Award" probably won't come as a surprise, but you'll definitely want to see which films have nabbed awards with names like "Truth to Power," "Best 'Feel Bad' Movie" and "In the Spirit of Catherine Deneuve." Particularly heartening:

Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Robert Greenwald's bold documentary unmasking Bush administration lies, took top Altie honors for the "Truth To Power Award."... As much as people loved Uncovered, many also marveled at the unique distribution methods the Greenwald team used to bring their indie doc to a wide audience. "Important not only for its content, which history will confirm and current events already are, but for the [MoveOn.org] 'underground' house party distribution method," Mike Dixon wrote. "This gets my vote for the sheer guts and marketing of this film through nationwide house parties," voter Noel Hermele wrote.

Speaking of the Oscars, though, that's precisely what David Edelstein and Lynda Obst, "a producer of $100 million movies and an accomplished writer and an A-list partygoer," are doing over at Slate. Edelstein is also a regular reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air and a quick check at the site shows that Diane Keaton is a guest today, followed by replays of two interviews with Bill Murray; Sofia Coppola and John Waters are listed as guests for upcoming shows.

Tim Dowling slips a few amusing words into the mouths of the likely Oscar winners. Also in the Guardian: David Thomson, who calls the Academy "one of the great shams of modern times" in the Independent, contrasts Jean Cocteau the director with Cocteau the screenwriter on the occasion of the retrospective at the National Film Theatre in London. And, in the wake of front-page controversy, calls for resignations and that sort of thing, Andy Humphries, writer and director of Sex Lives of the Potato Men, vigorously defends his film from the attacks from "middle-aged, middle-class film critics."

Back to the Oscars and the Independent for a moment. Geoffrey Macnab offers background on how the four nominations for City of God have left "the Academy's foreign-language committee looking very stupid indeed" and Charlotte O'Sullivan lists the "ten worst Oscar winners."

Sign along with David Poland's Miramax Songbook 2004.

"This has been the cleanest, most aboveboard, most decent Oscar race in years," writes Sharon Waxman in the New York Times: "And the most boring." We turn, then, to Elvis Mitchell: "[T]he significance of the Spirit Awards is not in their ability to predict winners of the Academy Awards, but in their ability to hint at the future of film."

Also in the NYT, Stephen Holden previews the "Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan in 18 Films" series at MOMA.

Curtis Sittenfeld in Salon: "There are other reasons why Dirty Dancing is the best girl movie ever made, and other reasons why its fans are so passionate, but the defining one is this: Dirty Dancing's basic proposition is that it's entirely reasonable for a moderately attractive young woman to find love with a smolderingly hot man."

The "monsters of kitsch are dying," laments Soutik Biswas at the BBC. He's referring to the "gargantuan, hand-painted cinema posters [that] were an integral part of the cityscape" in Indian cities. A quick gallery. Perhaps there's hope for the painters, after all, via individual commissions.

The Nation will go for weeks without allowing us non-subscribers a peek at Stuart Klawans's reviews, and finally, along comes one freely available, and what's the film at hand? The Passion of the Christ. My initial reaction was a hissed "Rats!" but hold the phone - it's a fine read:

However much you might play at seeing his work as just another movie, Gibson has gone outside the normal bounds of show business and into the territory of America's religious absolutists: John Ashcroft having himself anointed with oil, gay-hating lawmakers attempting to write Leviticus into the Constitution, antiabortionists shooting to kill, generals declaring holy war against the Muslim infidel. Our country has a great, great many such people who do not consider their convictions to be open to discussion... The ever-boyish and ingenuous Gibson, with his simple faith, has made The Passion of the Christ as a gift for these people.

A blog that does just that: Reviewing Entertainment Weekly. Via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tip. Via Chuck's Blogumentary, several amazing clips from CBS and ABC news broadcasts in 1968. Scroll down for the rancorous face-off between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal.

Posted by dwhudson at February 27, 2004 9:24 AM