NYT. Red Carpet.

The Carpetbagger suddenly has a lot of company as the New York Times runs another walloping weekend package, this one geared toward the Oscars. One nifty idea brings out the best in each of the paper's three critics as they write up "The Unforgettable Moment."

• Choosing the staircase scene in A History of Violence, the "scene that brings the sex-violence nexus to the boiling point," Manohla Dargis cracks open Cronenberg's film in such a way that it resonates across America and beyond.

• AO Scott revisits Syriana and "a backyard barbecue somewhere in Texas" where we get a glimpse of "how the business of the world gets conducted... The ones who really know how to acquire, use and preserve power express themselves obliquely, in whispers, riddles and incomplete sentences."

• Stephen Holden selects not a moment exactly but a scene that seems loaded with them, and this after making clear that choosing just one from nine in Nine Lives is tough enough as it is.

Also in the NYT this weekend:

• Hilary de Vries calls - on the editorial page, no less - for an end to awards show swag: "For a growing number of companies - Stila and MAC cosmetics, Palm Pilot and Roomba vacuums come to mind - gift bags have proved to be nothing more than an expensive hoax that they are now spurning.... Which leaves me wondering when Hollywood is going to wise up and realize that greed not only isn't good; it's seriously bad PR."

• David Edelstein storms into his profile of Philip Seymour Hoffman a bit over-excited, which is understandable, but soon calms down enough to get the actor to reveal the contours of his commitment: "Ultimately, you have to create such a layered understanding of how your characters function and why they function that you have the confidence to step forward and open your mouth."

• Dana Stevens discovers that Claire Danes "lights up at the chance to discuss Stage Beauty (2004)." And so, they talk about where she might place herself on "that spectrum" between "the extreme stylization represented by [Billy] Crudup's deliciously artificial Desdemona - and on the other, the more 'natural,' expressive, almost Methodesque style that emerges at the end, when Ms Danes takes over the same role."

• The paper's audio slide show feature is put to one of its best uses for Jon Burlingame's piece on composer John Williams. Clips from the four scores he's written this year for Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, War of the Worlds and Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith fade in and back out again, revealing how they compliment each film's imagery.

• In another audio slide show, the three critics are back, talking about how they'd hand out Oscar nominations in an ideal world: Dargis on her five favorite pictures of the year, Holden on directors and Scott on screenplays. Another silent slide show depicts their complete ballots sliding from a wax-sealed envelope.

• Three films - Good Night, and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain and Capote - began their Oscar campaigns with their trailers, argues Caryn James. In another piece, James writes, "The best-picture winner is often a movie with a marshmallow soul and a brain to match."

• Charles Solomon: "Hollywood executives keep insisting that Americans want to watch only computer animation. But the likely candidates for the Oscar for best animated feature defy this assumption." And those candidates are Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Howl's Moving Castle.

• Stuart Klawans proves once again that at least a few in the Nation have a sense of humor. "What are the odds that some of these based-on-a-true-story movies (let's call them Boats) might emerge as winners?" Watch how that plays throughout the rest of the piece.

• "This year's field is peppered with writers who happen to hold down day jobs as performers," writes Ross Johnson, who then notes historical precedents from Shakespeare through Dan Futterman and the sheer variety of the results.

• Mark Olsen checks back with a selection of films released earlier, some way earlier in the year, to see how they've fared since.

• The paper runs excerpts from the screenplays for Brokeback Mountain, Crash and The Squid and the Whale.

Meanwhile, in the Book Review (where you'll also find Terrence Rafferty on Julian Barnes's Arthur & George), Scott reviews Louis Sachar's Small Steps, a "follow-up and partial sequel to Holes."

Posted by dwhudson at January 14, 2006 7:16 AM