This one goes to 11.

In the end, it's all worked out just fine. At the Big Party, the Big Picture won all the Big Awards, eleven in all, while Lost in Translation swept the Independent Spirit Awards the day before. Seems about right. Even so, who can help but be glad it's all over. As Lynda Obst typed in her email conversation with David Edelstein in Slate, "Seeing the same people everywhere, exhaustion sets in."

Of course, she's talking about face-to-face encounters, but even we, the vast, unwashed television-viewing public, wonder, after weeks of Globes, Baftas, SAGs and all the rest, how, say, Tim Robbins or Sofia Coppola can possibly think up something new and different to say, standing up there once again with yet another hunk of metal in their hands.

Still, if you can't get enough, there's Cintra Wilson, at least a bit funnier than Billy Crystal, over in Salon on just how dull, dull, dull the evening turned out to be. To the point of putting Cinecultist to sleep. Even "Jim Carrey managed to be not at all funny," notes the NYT's Alessandra Stanley. Aaron Barnhart was bored, too, but he did doodle a fun list while the broadcast droned on and on. Also in TV Barn, Gary Dretzka has ideas for how to attract the Gen Y demographic the show's producer, Joe Roth, claimed he was after (though you wouldn't know by what he came up with, would you).

Anyway, speaking of dead horses, though it'd be tough to come up with a fresh angle on The Passion of the Christ, New Yorker editor David Remnick has done it: He's called up Elaine Pagels, a historian of early Christianity whose popularity hasn't made her any less rigorous. She explains her initial take: "There are many examples in the film of a preposterous dialectic: the bad Jews and the good Romans... Gibson's movie is no more subtle than The Lord of the Rings. There is the side of good and the side of evil."

Ah, but good and evil in LOTR3 is a point of contention nonetheless. As anyone who's read our interviews with Viggo Mortensen and John Rhys-Davies already knows, they disagree sharply over how to read Tolkein politically. Steven Hart elaborates. Also in Salon, editor David Talbot talks to Errol Morris about The Fog of War; this time, it's back to politics.

"To revisit Fred and Ginger in the nine black-and-white films they made together for RKO between 1933 and 1939 is to return to the greatest archetype of danced romantic love in film, and one of the enduring archetypes of love in popular culture." Alastair Macaulay in the Times Literary Supplement.

In Kamera, Graeme Cole reviews Steve Chibnall's British Film Guide on Get Carter and Laurence Boyce reviews Colin MacCabe's Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70.

For Wired News, Jason Silverman tracks varying degrees of respect for online film critics; via Movie City News, appropriately enough.

Matt Langdon chalks up the all-time box office totals in the US for foreign films.

Soma Wadhwa introduces a film of "relentless brutality" and "repulsion," Matrubhoomi in Outlook India without condeming it. Also, Namrata Joshi: "Just when you thought there could be nothing more to know about the brassy bouncing superstar of Hindi cinema, along comes Hyphen Films' The Inner World of Shah Rukh Khan, financed by the UK's Channel 4. It literally takes you where no SRK fan has gone before - a whisper away from the hero's innermost insecurities and fears."

"Owen describes us as Hope and Crosby without the huge following." Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson commandeer an interview in Time.

Is there a "statute of limitations" for certain widely popular or even classic movies when it comes to assuming surprise twists and endings are public knowledge? With common sense and winning humor, Chris Rywalt writes in TeeVee that we all ought to be a little more careful.

Catching up with the weekend papers, first, that marvelous portfolio of portraits by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, "Great Performers," in the New York Times Magazine. Favorites: Chiaki Kuriyama and Judah Friedlander. Also in the NYT:

• Terrence Rafferty on Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano.
• Kicking off a trio of Oscar Eve op-eds, Sylvain Chomet offers a snapshot of the state of animation, the good and the bad;
• Pankaj Mishra does more or less the same thing for Bollywood;
• And Colin McGinn has a theory about movies and dreams.
• Eric Dash in the Business pages on Lions Gate.
• Bill Carter on Stephen King's 13-parter, Kingdom Hospital. If you click, don't forget to visit the Pain Room.
• Virginia Heffernan talks about The Sopranos with its creator and executive producer David Chase.
• Rebecca Traister gathers other people's theories as to why the post-Moulin Rouge, post-Chicago tsunami of musicals has yet to hit.
• Robin Toner: "[C]ulture wars wax and wane. And in recent days, as the nation furiously debated gay marriage, Mel Gibson's movie... and Janet Jackson's raunchy half-time show at the Super Bowl, the culture war seemed to be waxing again."
• On that note, Stephen Prothero, author of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon: "One puzzle of the reception of the film thus far is why born-again Christians have given such a big thumbs up to what is so unapologetically a Catholic movie.... The culture wars no doubt have something to do with the evangelicals' decision to close ranks with Gibson, who must be commended for so adroitly spinning the debate over his depiction of Jews into a battle between secular humanists and true believers."

In the Guardian and Observer:

• An extract from Denis Quilley's The Quilley Memorandum - Happiness Indeed features a furious Laurence Olivier, a drunk Anthony Hopkins and a resilient John Gielgud.
• Joanna Scanlan proves both high-spirited and vulnerable in her LA diary.
• George Wright summarizes and updates the racism debate surrounding Lost in Translation.
• Geraldine Bedell profiles Michael Gambon.
• Why Barbara Ellen is so keen to get Alicia Silverstone to talk about her family is anyone's guess.

Read Italian? Via Perlentaucher, Daniela Giammusso's talk with Roland Emmerich in L'espresso about The Day After Tomorrow.

Online viewing tip. There's been quite a bit of WTFing in the non-Japanese-speaking realms of the Net over the past week or so as the link to a trailer for a film called Casshern has been passed from inbox to inbox, blog to blog. What can be ascertained so far (and really, it shouldn't be this difficult), taking Brian Linder's piece over at FilmForce as a first batch of clues, is that Kazuaki Kiriya, a music video director married to J-pop star Utada Hikaru, is a fan of a 70s-era anime series which may have been called Shinzou Ningen Casshan (New Android Casshan) and has based this film on that series. More will filter out as the film opens in Japan in either April or June, depending on which blog entry you read, but in the meantime, the trailer.

Posted by dwhudson at March 1, 2004 11:28 AM