CM: I agree w/ your brief conclusions - I saw 'Letters' the other day and it is in fact extremely overrated, mostly due to Eastwood/Haggis cliches. But it's worth $10 and you kind of have to nominate it for Eastwood's undertaking alone. A couple scenes match the intensity of Saving Pritave Ryan and there are good performances throughout.

Oh, good. At least some one else found LMS to be conventional. Everyone just raves about how funny the ending of that film was. I sat in the theater CRINGING during the climatic scene, and not in a good way. I thought it was such a predictable ending, I felt cheated.

I think that the American "indie" film scene has developed a sensibility over the years as predictable as the Hollywood scene. Not a revolutionary comment, just look at Sundance.

And my husband despises the film, questioning, "exactly what was grandpa doing in the basement with the little girl?"

ANYWAY, apparently many press folk are so shocked that Dreamgirls did not get a best pic nod, but I am not surprised. It did get appropriate noms in art direction, costumes, etc. But I don't think it was best pic material.

I have been a big Jennifer Hudson fan for a few years now, just waiting for her to be able to put herself out there with some good material. She definitely deserves all the hype and I hope she wins. And I can't wait for her solo album to come out (later this year?)...

i thought Little Miss Sunshine was cute, but not all that good. The little girl was great, but best actress?! I mean, not a bad little indie film, but not really that good either. I guess it's jsut an indication of how bad indie films have become.

As for Letters From Iwo Jima. I saw that this weekend. I really really disliked it. Sure, it looked great, the acting was great, and there was a good scene or two. But it went nowhere, did nothing, and bored the hell out of me. It was scene after scene of people escaping from tunnels to some other tunnel. This is the third time in a row I have been snake bitten by an Eastwood movie (Mystic River was TERRIBLE, Million Dollar Baby was good but so maudlin). I would rank this above Mystic, but still, I would not reccomend this movie. Perhaps I am crazy, since all the reviews have been so good. And Eastwood has to stop doing his own music. He is terrible.

LMS provided some thrills worth the price of admission. It's a nice little movie in an era when plenty of better, nicer little movies (like Rushmore - movies that are the reason LMS is possible) have been critically ignored. The incessantly beeping van was pretty hilarious, though, and Steve Carell is just alright with me.

I am pleased beyond pleased to see Ryan Gosling got a nomination, when that film could have easily slipped through the cracks. "Half Nelson" was certainly a difficult movie for myriad reasons but Gosling was superb and the grit of that movie feels pretty authentic. I was talking to someone about the feeling you get in some areas of New York that you're not at all in New York anymore, and HN pretty much conveys that.

The Nicholson nomination more than made up for any goodwill old Oscar had accrued, though. God, did he make that movie so much worse than it needed to be. I'll readily recognize the man's great body of work, but he was unbearable and his character was as flat as can be; seriously, the Joker was far more complex, and he was overacting in that role.

YESSSSSSS! More LMS dissent!

Mystic River -- TOTALLY awful. And at this point, I don't even remember my reasons, I just recall thinking I had wasted 2 hours or so of my life.

I've seen very few any of the Oscar movies this year. The only one I've seen of the best picture nominees is Little Miss Sunshine, and I agree with Jessica. It was boring and pretty lame.

Blood Diamond and the Science of Sleep were some of my recent favorites from memory, as well as An Inconvenient Truth. Who Killed the Electric Car I saw just the other day and I though that was a good documentary as well.

CM, is Pan's Labyrinth as good as the hype suggests? I really want to see it, and my guess is that it's good, but not as great as the critics have lead me to believe.
The Queen sounds terribly dull. I wish I could see Fast Food Nation and Volver, but alas... Idaho.

Also, I have not seen Babel or the Queen and I guess I will. But I am not looking forward to either.

Pan's Labryinth was good. Not great. Welcome to the films of 2006.

So we all agree, then: Mystic River was a terrible movie.

I didn't hate Little Miss Sunshine, I just thought it was OK. I had been led to believe that it was of You Can Count on Me quality, and it decidedly was not.

Pan's Labyrinth was excellent, perfect for what it was. The previews oversold the fantasy element, but in some ways it's everything La Vita Bella was not (although it tackled a less horrifying, yet related, subject). Slater, you should see it simply because you're a big For Whom the Bell Tolls fan.

Volver was also excellent, but I pretty much like everything Almodovar has done.

Oh, and Jim: Nicholson was not nominated.

Borat was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. I just thought that that was an odd choice of category, but apparently they didn't know where to put a mostly improvised comedy (although thanks to CM, we know that it was actually pretty well written in advance or rather one side was written).

Anthony, the girl from LMS was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, which is a lot different than getting nominated for Best Actress.

LMS was good, but not great. I thought the movie was redeemed by then ending, which I found quite fun.

I liked LMS's ending better in Napoleon Dynamite... or About a Boy... (Actually, I liked LMS better than ND, but not as much as AAB.)

Rodenator, the writing in Borat wasn't even necessarily one-sided. In that interview, the writers state that they wrote possible responses from the non-actors, and quite often what they wrote out actually happened.

I guess it's different, but still, LMS, while good, is so overrated at this point. Maybe the screenplay for writing was justified, but best picture? Wow. Again, I have not seen 2 of the 5 films nominated, but the Oscar's are just getting worse and worse with each year. Oh well, go Scorsese.

BTW, Slater, almost everyone I knew who has seen The Queen has said that they thought it was going to be boring, but it very much wasn't. Hopefully, I should see soon.

LA Anthony, not sure you're right here. Nothing nominated is worse than Crash, it seems to me. You should see Babel -- it has some very good parts.

The ONLY good thing about ND WAS the ending...and that it ended.

Pan's Labyrinth had one of the best moments EVER in a movie, the whole theater cheered and clapped spontaneaously...I loved that film. Not what I was expecting (more of a fantasy). Better than.

I guess I miswrote when I wrote the one-sided thing. My main quibble with your post was the adapted screenplay thing, as I thought the adapted screenplay nomination was quite odd.

Are all movies based upon tv shows considered adapted? Just suppose, The Brady Bunch Movie was really awesome mostly due to its amazing script, would it be nominated for best screenplay or best adapted screenplay? Have any movies based upon tv shows been nominated?

I guess I could look this up myself, but what exactly does adapted mean? Does the story have to be adapted or do the characters make something adapted?

Not that it was mindblowingly original, but as I said I thought the ending of LMS was fun, and a bit of a fuck you to children's beauty pageants, which I think are the sickest fucking thing out there.

PS I can't believe I saw Nacho Libre in the theater on openning night. Sad.

Marty is the only film adapted from TV to win best picture, so I suggest you start there. And yes, it is adapted, since it was based on the TV show.

As for Crash, I liked it. Nothing will ever be worse than A Beautiful Mind to me. I am just saying that the Oscar's feel more and more like the golden globes every year. I.e. more about who people like rather than the films themselves and just not that important.

The Writer's Guild of America has an award category "Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published" -- maybe that's a more specific breakdown of "adapted"?

It is good to know that I will still feel satisfaction when I finally get to see Pan's Labyrinth. I'm probably going to have to pass on the Queen though (at least while its in theaters). I would feel worried to use up my movie capital on that one (the missus will only tolerate so many messups before it's back to watching fare like "The Holiday" or "The Lake House." :) )

Pan's Labyrinth is good, but not great. It's possible that that's attributable to my general knocking down foreign films one notch because I'm constantly either missing dialogue because I'm watching action or action because I'm watching dialogue and not being able to tell if the actor's are good or not based on my lack of ability to read their voices.

I'd give my favorites of the year to Children of Men and the Departed.

Jessica, dodging spoilers, are you talking about the scene in the empty pantry with the maid and the General? I don't remember applause in my theater.

Yes, between Mercedes, the maid, and the Captain, in the storage shed! The entire NYC 42nd Street theater audience burst out in cheers and applause. Simultaneously. Including myself. I was gripping a wad of napkins intensely for most of the film (as I don't do well with gore, which is peppered throughout). When this happened I started clapping with everyone, unintentionally throwing all the napkins in the air (and in front of Mike A's face -- he was caught up in the moment himself and did not notice)!

I.A.: I thought that the acting in PL was so good and the dialogue itself somewhat basic that the subtitles weren't totally necessary. Yes, I know Spanish a bit, but if you think you missed things, you probably didn't.

My faves seen in the theater for 2006: Fallen (Austrian film in NY Film Festival), Slither, The Fountain, The Prestige (I have a Hugh Jackman problem) and Pan's Labyrinth.

Things I'm deeply ashamed I saw in the theater in 2006: Nacho Libre (noted above), XMen The "Last" Stand, and, drumroll please...the worst movie of 2006, Ultraviolet.

I don't remember much of the film, but I don't think of A Beautiful Mind as the crap you find it to be. I lost faith in the Oscars when another Russel Crowe film, Gladiator won. Besides his best actor nod was making up for the fact that he didn't win for The Insider.

Nope, A Beautiful Mind was the worst. As for Gladiator, I saw in in the theater and thought, eh, that was pretty bad. But I would give it a D+ and I would give that Ron Howard piece of shit an F. If I were handing out number grades, I would give it a 0. If I was grading the film while it was still in kindergarden, I would give it a NI, which means needs improvement (wasn't that the worst grade you could get then). As Ebert once said of another film, I hated that movie. Hated hated hated hated it.

Would ABM been worse had it starred Steve Martin, another of the victims of your irrational hate?

The only reason I care about the Oscar nominees announced this morning is that knowing them may help us kick butt at trivia tonight.

I laughed my butt off at LMS, but I do think it was too... cliche-heavy. I also laughed my butt off at Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, but I wouldn't vote for it for Best Picture.

I still need to find some time to take myself out to see Pan's Labyrinth.

I'm dumb and my eyes must have been deceiving me as Nicholson wasn't nominated. Duh.

No, because ABM could have been worse. Duh, there is nothing worse than a zero. And god do I hate old Steve Martin. I imagine him standing around famous works of art, a swirling a brandy snifter in one hand while making droll observations that are so fucking unfunny. Read any piece that man has written in the New Yorker in the last ten years. I bet you will not even chuckle. I don't even have to argue that all his films suck, because everyone is already aware of that.

Oops, forgot a "not" in there. BY the wat ABM was so bad that if Steve Martin starred in it, I think it would have been better.

I really enjoy Parenthood starring Steve Martin and directed by Ron Howard.

So basically, the last really good Steve Martin comedy you saw was when you were 13.

I think it's time somebody buys markvsanthony.com and you guys could have at it all day long.

Re: Steve Martin. The Jerk was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite movies.

Novacaine might be the best Steve Martin movie in recent years.

I liked Bowfinger and enjoyed reading a few of Steve Martin's books.

Yes, I forgot about Bowfinger. That one was good too.

Wait? We're liking Bowfinger now? Did I travel to some parallel universe?

Everyone else seemed to like the Spanish prisoner (although I hated it), My Blue Heaven was alright, Planes Trains and Automobiles was alright. I liked 3 Amigos when I was 13.

Hey, check out the official title of 3 Amigos: ¡Three Amigos! Give him some points on the upside down exclamation mark.

you guys have me giving a good ol' Simsbury "awwww" to your East Coast/West Coast movie critiques. It's cute and the good ol' Canadian in me has to suggest... Water! Water! Water!

If I ever Mark see this in person, sparks will fly.

I am having on bad spelling day.

Shoulda said it before, but Mark Wahlberg was very enjoyable in "The Departed." He gave me good vibrations.

Oh, by the way, based on the theory that the short film with the funniest name will be the winner, I'm picking "No Time For Nuts" as this year's big winner.

I'm pretty new to this forum but I can't resist chiming in here. I lived in a group house for a while with a woman obsessed with Steve Martin. She would buy absolutely anything with which he was involved, for some reason always on VHS. Up until that time, I generally thought he was funny, mostly based on vague recollections of old SNL routines, the "El Guapo" speech in "Three Amigos," and, yes, "The Jerk". Line up his entire body of work on the mantle, though, and its profound shittiness is just staggering. "Mixed Nuts"? "The Out-of-Towners"? "Houseguest"? I'm just saying.

Rick, in fairness to Steve Martin (who admittedly has done bad stuff), almost every comedian has an equal amount of tarnishes (save, perhaps, Peewee Herman)... Although I must say that while I didn't like Big Top Peewee as a kid, it has grown on me considerably as an adult. On the downside, I just remembered that ol Peewee did have that ugly blemish with that superheroes movie thing a while back where he farted a lot. Very disappointing.

well, that was a lot more comments in a lot shorter time than I'm used to. Good to see you posting a lot, Jessica.

I know I'm late to the party, but I just want to say that I was really shocked that Volver didn't receive a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

On the subject of Steve Martin, I loved LA Story. I think that was the last good comedy I saw him in.

folks, it's all about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. although he even managed to overact monkey boy Ruprecht.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: I forgot about this one. It's a good one, but pretty old at this point. At some point people will look back upon Ben Stiller with a similar regard for how unfunny he was (probably some people already do)... As CM mentioned in an earlier discussion about Jack Black, it is hard to survive as a household comedian without doing some mainstream foder.

Alina: excellent point. Somehow I overlooked Volver's snub -- did people mistaken Pan's Labyrinth for a Spanish film and chose one over the other?

I think a lot of people already look upon Ben Stiller as unfunny. After all more of the masses are familiar with Meet the Fockers than they are with The Ben Stiller Show.

Hopefully Ricky Gervais won't start appearing in shite.

Although isn't he in Night at the Museum?

I used to like Ben Stiller, but then I saw Meet the Parents. And then I saw ads for Along Came Polly and Meet the Fockers, but by then I knew better than to see them.

Yes, there is a pointless Ricky Gervais appearance in Night at the Museum.

By the way, The Fountain was totally overlooked for Best Score.

Also, no nod whatsoever to SOAP? Shame on the Academy!