POST-POSCAR PARTY: MEET THE BATTIES! As mentioned previously, my friend Susan Thea Posnock's latest Poscars have finally been announced! Which means that it's time once again for me to gainsay the Poscars via the Battie Awards, drawing on my spotty film viewing habits. So here goes....


FAVORITE PICTURE I've had trouble with this one this year, so I think the main point is that 2007 was a year of many very accomplished motion pictures. Poscar-winner No Country for Old Men and Sweeney Todd are perfect or pretty close to perfect; Juno is less airtight and more provocative. The Savages is very strong, too. And Hannah Takes the Stairs should not be underestimated. (More on that later.) But just to use this high-profile platform to shine a spotlight on a much less appreciated movie, I think I'll go with the neglected romantic comedy Ira & Abby because it blew me away and it's the movie I most want people to see and appreciate, with its excellent cast and well-sculpted script. If that's not a favorite, I don't know what is.

FAVORITE REVIVAL This is also a case where I'm reluctant to pick just one. So I'll pick just three: Charles Burnett's artful Killer of Sheep, the wonderful French noir Le Doulos, and the astounding home video Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation.

OVERLOOKED ACTORS The Poscar favorites were Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, Thomas Haden Church, Tommy Lee Jones, Viggo Mortensen, and Saoirse Ronan. But let us not forget the contributions Parker Posey and Drea de Matteo in Broken English, and the casts of Ira & Abby, The Savages (including Philip Bosco), No Country for Old Men (especially Kelly McDonald) and Hannah Takes the Stairs.

MOST PROMISING USE OF DIALOGUE Kudos to Diablo Cody for the transition from heavy slang to (relatively) clear admissions in Juno. The kind of thing I associate with much classic literature, it's a very pleasant surprise in Juno.

STEALTH SUBPLOT I loved how Jennifer Garner's story gradually came to the fore in Juno, but here I've got to take note of the incredibly sad story of Kelly McDonald's Carla Jean Moss in No Country for Old Men. That poor sweetie!



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THANKLESS ROLE Jennifer Garner came close as the wannabe mom in Juno, but for the second year in a row, this Battie goes to Emily Blunt, this time for her obnoxious, hard-to-like character in The Jane Austen Book Club. Just look at how the group reacts to her Prudie!



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FAVORITE PERFORMANCE BY A PROP I won't argue with the Poscar that went to the McLovin ID, but I would like to take a moment to salute Chigurh's unforgettable hairstyle in No Country for Old Men as Most Memorable Hairdo. I imagine it was modeled after some police sketch. Know what I mean?

BEST ACCESSORIZED The accessories (and makeup) speak volumes about Drea de Matteo's character in Broken English.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ARTICLE OF CLOTHING I totally agree with the Poscar for the chef's hat in Ratatouille, explained in DVD Extras More Stimulating than the Movie Itself.

LEAST APPEALING LEADING MAN What can I say? I found Ratatouille's Linguini hard to digest.

HALFSIES Half of the Battie for the Movie that Falls Apart Midway goes to Broken English; the other half goes to Hairspray.

DUMBEST BEHAVIOR BY A CHARACTER WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER The Poscar in this category went to Josh Brolin's character Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men, but I think I can top that by giving the Battie to all the Transformers in Transformers. Here's the deal: The main character in the movie is desperate to raise some money, so he offers his grandpa's glasses for sale on eBay. The glasses, it turns out, are the Holy Grail for the computer-savvy Transformers, who wreak all kinds of Oscar-nominated havoc to get the specs. But all they needed to do is put up a buck or two on eBay, saving everyone a lot of cataclysmic trouble.

NEVER MIND THE HYPE Hannah Takes the Stairs risked being subsumed by the buzz over mumblecore, but it's worth being considered in its own right as a canny look at the twentysomethings of today, akin to such arthouse staples as Baby Face and the early films of Godard and Truffaut. Plus it's got the Best Use of Brass.

BEST ORGAN Normally this would go to a porn star, but this year it goes to Sweeney Todd for the mood-setting music during the opening credits.

MOST CONFUSING ACCENT The central figure in an extremely clichéd scene in Gone Baby Gone (it's like something out of Hollywood Shuffle), the character Cheese is described as "Haitian" but I swear he sounds Jamaican to me. Possible explanation: In Southie, "Haitian" is another word for "Jamaican." Or maybe I'm totally wrong about this.

MOST INEXPLICABLE LACK OF EFFECT Why doesn't Patrick get his ass kicked in the Southie bar in Gone Baby Gone? Just because he's carrying that little 'ol gun? Maybe Southie isn't so tough after all....

BEST IMAGINED PLOTLINE In Gone Baby Gone, co-PI Angie Gennaro could've been in on the plot, as a relation of Francine Doyle.

DON'T GET ME WRONG I liked Gone Baby Gone. It's A Good B Noir Dressed in A Clothing.

MOST BITTERSWEET PIE Waitress, of course. I miss you, Adrienne Shelly!

SPIRIT OF INGMAR BERGMAN Sarah Polley for Away from Her.

SPIRIT OF DIVINE This posthumous Battie goes to Divine, whose wonderful kinetic performance in the original Hairspray completely overshadows John Travolta's fat suit-embedded turn in the musical remake.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT Were you really impressed by Romance and Cigarettes? Watch just about anything by Dennis Potter, the genius behind The Singing Detective. However, Romance and Cigarettes also includes the Funniest Gag, which has to do with Susan Sarandon's character.

BEST REALIZATION OF ONE OF MY IDEAS Paprika, of course!

BEST DEPICTION OF A MEDICAL CONDITION Philip Bosco and Julie Christie were good as people with dementia, but Jack Carpenter and Crystal Hunt broke new ground as people on gluten-free diets in Sydney White. (I'm presuming that at least one of them was formally diagnosed as having celiac disease.)

MEET CUTE The encounter between those two gluten-free characters in Sydney White. It's like Papageno and Papagena!

MOST DECONSTRUCTIONIST Todd Haynes indulged his interest in semiotics in I'm Not There, which (hype aside) is/isn't about Bob Dylan. It's difficult, like being/not being there/not there in college when deconstruction was/wasn't king.

GENRE Doomed (mis)adventure (for both documentaries and non-documentaries).

MOVIE I WISH I'D SEEN How did I fail to see Fay Grim?

CHEESIEST FUN The movie Prey is a kind of throwback to the post-Jaws killer animal films of the Seventies. Part of the fun is seeing through the transparent contrivances that provide the lions with fresh meat.

MOST DIVISIVE FILM GEEK FLICK You see, Grindhouse pays tribute to the fun side of certain junky movies, and it doesn't just pair up two types of those movies. "Death Proof" in itself is two movies in one, with one set of women being victims in the first part and the other set of women refusing to be victims in the second part. So it's a kind of dialect within a dialectic...ah, what's the use? Either you liked it or you didn't! But it does deserve Best Trailers and Best Pee Joke.

MOST DIVISIVE EDITING Some people—some people I admire—think the world of The Bourne Ultimatum. And that's one place where we part ways. The chase and fight in the Casbah exemplifies weaknesses of many modern Hollywood action movies. The idea of the chase is a good one, but it's too hard (perhaps impossible) to figure out where the parties are in relation to one another, how they're keeping track of each other, etc. It's just a lot of technical devices, such as cutting and suspenseful music, at the service of a clever concept that just isn't well realized. So you lose out on drama, on theater. And the fight scene is also a lot of cutting without a strong sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the fighters. Again, you lose out.

For an example of a good chase...I dunno. I was thinking of The Third Man...or better yet Blade Runner...or perhaps lots of No Country for Old Men. For a really good dramatic fight, take a look at Drunken Master 2, in which Jackie Chan uses a crazy drunken style of fighting.



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WORST TREND Besides (see above) substituting quick edits and noise for dramatic action? How about opera-length features...without intermissions? Grindhouse excepted.

WORST USE OF 3D This time it goes to Whatever Harry Potter Movie Came Out in 2007. The movie also offered more examples of incoherent fight scenes (see above).

MOST GRATIFYING VIDEO RELEASE Just over four years ago in Entertainment Weekly, I called for the DVD release of the Busby Berkeley extravaganza The Gang's All Here, in all of its Technicolor ludicrosity. Here's "The Polka Dot Polka."



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