3 Honorary Awards

I kind of rushed myself to get the 1st Annual Fin de cinema Film Awards published that I forgot three very important awards to bestow. My apologies to the recipients.

The John Malkovich Award: Michelle Monaghan - Gone Baby Gone

The John Malkovich Award goes to the outstandingly bad/forgettable/annoying performance in an otherwise decent film. I'm kind of stretching the word "decent" for Gone Baby Gone, but Michelle Monaghan was so exceptional in being more of a set piece than an actor that I couldn't have her go home empty-handed. She literally cowers opposite every single actor in the movie (Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan, Ed Harris) to the point that makes the audience question why she's even there in the first place. She's the "love interest" whose purpose only comes late in the film, and by that time, you've forgotten why you should even care what she has to say, or how her opinion would affect Casey Affleck.

Runners-Up: David Strathairn - The Bourne Ultimatum; Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [for being another example of Casey Affleck's performance rendering another actor's absolutely forgettable]

The Teaching Mrs. Tingle Award: Catherine Keener - Into the Wild

The Teaching Mrs. Tingle Award goes to the actor who manages to still retain their usual "fabulousness" despite working under the conditions of a shitty movie (read: Helen Mirren). Into the Wild sucks. I've bitched and moaned about it for months now. Catherine Keener is radiant in just about everything she does (as long as it's not playing a stock character in a stock movie like The Interpreter). In Into the Wild, she manages to hit a home-run every time she's onscreen, which for the laboring runningtime certainly isn't enough. What's also remarkable about Keener's performance here is that she isn't condemned to her usual role of ice queen cunt, which admittedly she does wonderfully. Her performance is probably the only authentic moment of Into the Wild, even though more people are leaning toward Hal Holbrook.

Runners-Up: Marion Cotillard - La Vie en rose; Tea Leoni - You Kill Me [It really pains me to say that, but it's true]; Margot Martindale - Paris je t'aime

The Best (And, Therefore, Gayest) Idea for a Broadway Musical: Xanadu

All this talk in my comment forum about Xanadu reminded me, "how could I forget to shamelessly include Xanadu as an award recipiant this year?" Certain films, like Xanadu, exude time-frame, so giving it an award for 2007 is perfectly acceptable in my book. Thankfully, for those who would disagree, there's validity to its inclusion: it was the surprising hit of the Broadway season this year. A lot of people were surprised, but not me. When I found out that they were still going to use such songs as "Suddenly" and the rousing closing-number "Xanadu," I knew they had a hit-in-the-making, even if the film itself never took off when it hit theatres. I'm sure the Electric Light Orchestra music is probably sadly missing from the production, but I've got to hand it to Broadway for adapting a Hollywood film in dire need of a revival, because, well, Broadway is about as fresh out of ideas as Hollywood is.

Mi cumpleaños

In addition to today being my golden birthday (23 on the 23rd), don't forget to wish Amanda Plummer, Chaka Khan, Catherine Keener, porno stars Octapussy and Champagne, Felicity's Keri Russell, musician Poe, John Wayne Bobbitt, Damon Albarn, Richard Grieco, Hope Davis, Michael Haneke, Ric Ocasek, and the late Akira Kurosawa a happy birthday as well. I think I'm in good company.

Ballers

Friends with Money - dir. Nicole Holofcener - 2006 - USA

The pairing of some of your favorite ladies (Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack) with one of your not-so-favorites (Jennifer Aniston) might not have been as bad as this happens to be. Holofcener takes the Anne Heche/Catherine Keener characters of her quintessentially 90s dramedy, Walking and Talking, multiplies them and finds them where we'd logically assume they'd be in their early 40s, now in Los Angeles with terribly unsatisfying results. Her last feature, Lovely and Amazing, was amazingly dull, though Kenner will always be one of those actresses you'd watch reciting the phone book, and since then she's directed various episodes of Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, and The Gilmore Girls, which would explain why, despite some closing resolution, Friends with Money feels more like a television pilot that hasn't become truly realized than an actual film.

Jennifer Aniston plays the Jennifer Aniston role here, a beautiful, but down-to-earth, trying-to-make-a-modest-living gal (here, she's a house-cleaner... riiight). She routinely dines with her three girlfriends, all married and wildly more successful than she is. Kenner is a screenwriter in an unhealthy marriage. McDormand is a fashion designer on the verge of a nervous breakdown, with a sexually questionable husband. Cusack is the perfect one with a happy marriage and an endless bank account. Hannah and Her Sisters this is (unfortunately) not. Scenes slip past us, offering little depth or meaning outside the boundaries of the screen, and Holofcener's decision to not use a tripod during most scenes feels more amateurish than effective. I stuck with Friends with Money despite all this, until Holofcener decided to teach Jennifer Aniston a lesson. It's a lesson we all have been told forever, and though this may be because of Aniston in the equation, it still doesn't work. Though it may be better than those other Friends we know Aniston from (only with money), but you're better off finding some better ones.