This looks funny

Be Kind Rewind, the latest from Michel Gondry, starring Mos Def and Jack Black:

National Board of Review awards

The National Board of Review is known for basically one thing... announcing its year-end awards before every other critic organization. They are the Iowa of the movie award season.

Here are their choices for 2007:

Best Film:
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Best Director
TIM BURTON, Sweeney Todd

Best Actor
GEORGE CLOONEY, Michael Clayton

Best Actress
JULIE CHRISTIE, Away From Her

Best Supporting Actor
CASEY AFFLECK, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Supporting Actress
AMY RYAN, Gone Baby Gone

Best Foreign Film
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

Best Documentary
BODY OF WAR

Best Animated Feature
RATATOUILLE

Best Ensemble Cast
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor
EMILE HIRSCH, Into The Wild

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress
ELLEN PAGE, Juno

Best Directorial Debut
BEN AFFLECK, Gone Baby Gone

Best Original Screenplay (tie)
DIABLO CODY, Juno and NANCY OLIVER, Lars and the Real Girl

Best Adapted Screenplay
JOEL COEN and ETHAN COEN, No Country For Old Men

Top Ten Films
(In alphabetical order)
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
ATONEMENT
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
THE BUCKET LIST
INTO THE WILD
JUNO
THE KITE RUNNER
LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
MICHAEL CLAYTON
SWEENEY TODD

Top Five Foreign Films:
(In alphabetical order)
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS
THE BAND’S VISIT
THE COUNTERFEITERS
LA VIE EN ROSE
LUST, CAUTION

Top Five Documentary Films
(In alphabetical order)
DARFUR NOW
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
NANKING
TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE
TOOTS

Top Independent Films
(In alphabetical order)
AWAY FROM HER
GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
HONEYDRIPPER
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH
A MIGHT HEART
THE NAMESAKE
ONCE
THE SAVAGES
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING
WAITRESS

Career Achievement
MICHAEL DOUGLAS

William K. Everson Film History Award
ROBERT OSBORNE

Career Achievement in Cinematography
ROGER DEAKINS

The BVLGARI Award for NBR Freedom of Expression
THE GREAT DEBATERS and PERSEPOLIS

A new beginning

So it's December and I'm a month away from a blog called Clay's 2007 Movies being hopelessly out-of-date. My readership — numbering in the ones and spanning the globe from South Florida to Vermont — deserves better.

Initially, I considered starting up a new blog for Clay's 2008 Movies and continuing that pattern indefinitely. But then I realized that it isn't just the year in the title that limits the blog — the "movies" part does as well. I have posted on television and music, and I would like to explore those arenas more going forward.

So I hereby launch Meet Me in Montauk, a blog for musings on movies, television and music (as well as anything else I deem worthy). I will continue to blog on every film I see in theaters or on DVD, but I will post more often on the rest.

The title comes from my favorite movie of the past decade (and a candidate for my favorite movie ever): Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I chose it because I needed something quick, I liked the alliteration and because of what it represents in the film — a whispered memory, something that dances in the back of your mind and tries to manifest itself as action. That's kind of how I've felt about my aborted attempts at screenwriting and other creative pursuits, and perhaps this blog can serve as an outlet for those ideas. I look forward to it.

Talk to Me

Date: December 4
Location: Clifton Living Room

The biggest surprise in this biopic about famed DJ Petey Green is that it's not really a biopic about famed DJ Petey Green. It's a story about a friendship between two very different men and how it helped each of them navigate and shape a very turbulent time in American history. Don Cheadle (as always) delivers an excellent performance as the brash, vulgar Green but for my money, the real star of the show is Chiwetel Ejiofor. He has the "Tom Cruise in Rain Man" role here — the straight man playing off a very showy partner — but he anchors the movie's heart and soul. Ejiofor is one of the most gifted actors working today but he has yet to land a true lead part. With Talk to Me, it's nice to see him finally get a role that's as big as his talent.

Dan in Real Life

Date: December 1
Location: AMC Sunset Place

Alex and I cashed in a free Moviewatcher ticket and chose this sweet, though flawed, romantic comedy. The film rests on the shoulders of Steve Carell, and he delivers big time. In a performace much closer to his Little Miss Sunshine sad-sack than The Office's Michael Scott, Carell delivers both the laughs and the heartache. As with La Vie en Rose, the film itself doesn't live up to its lead performance — plot contrivances and movie-quirky situations weigh things down. But this is a hard movie to criticize... it makes you laugh and pulls your heart strings (and even features a nice little Elvis Costello cover). Just fine for a free movie on date night.

La Vie en Rose

Date: November 28
Location: Clifton Living Room

I really hate the Academy's habit of giving Best Actor and Actress Oscars to people portraying historic figures. Ray Charles, June Carter, Truman Capote, Idi Amin, Queen Elizabeth II, Aileen Wournos, Virginia Woolf, Erin Brockovich, the list goes on and on, with most of those coming in the past several years. (Incidentally, that might be the first time the names of Queen Elizabeth and Aileen Wournos were so closely linked). Yes, I hate that tendency of the Academy. It strikes me as simple, lazy and dismissive of creation in favor of imitation.

So it is with some regret that I announce that Marion Cotillard better win the Best Actress award this year for her stunning portrayal of Edith Piaf. I don't care that Piaf was a real person — and the truth is I knew so little of her that this movie may as well have been about a fictional character. The French actress embodies this bizarre, tragic character from a wide-eyed innocent at age 20 through a bitter, proud, decrepit faded star at age 47 (looking more like 70 thanks to a debilitating illness). Cotillard, a beautiful 32-year-old who resembles Audrey Tatou in the DVD interviews, absolutely disappears into Piaf. It's a stunning performance, the best I've seen by anybody so far this year.

The film itself is less successful. It is beautifully shot but the time-leaping chronology is distracting and at times it slips into the cliches of other musical biopics (newspaper clippings floating by to signal success, for example). The childhood scenes, where young Edith is raised alternately by whores and circus performers, are surreal and satisfying, and Edith's final days are handled with a delicate touch. The middle section, however, is something of a jumble (intentionally, I believe) and I wasn't always sure what was happening when, or why.

Still, I highly recommend taking in Cotillard's performance. She is a shoo-in for an Oscar nod, and would be a sure winner were her performance not in French. Even so, I think she might pull off the first foreign-language acting win since Roberto Benigni scored a trophy for Life is Beautiful. I'll certainly be cheering her on.

Enchanted

Date: November 23
Location: AMC Aventura

Sophia, the Gallups and I braved the mall on Black Friday and actually didn't have much trouble at all. The theater itself was dead — no bargains to be had, I suppose. Enchanted didn't live up to it's 92% Tomato ranking, though it had some charming moments. James Marsden was very funny as the cartoon Prince Edward. He has carved out a great niche playing his comic-book good looks for laughs. The plot made very little sense — I was never clear on how the cartoon world and real world existed alongside one another. How is it that everybody in Central Park breaks into a choreographed musical number, for example? Does the infiltration of a couple cartoon characters make New Yorkers behave like cartoons? And if so, why was Patrick Dempsey's character not affected? Inconsistencies like that, along with some cliched plot turns and character types, keep this from being a special film. That said, Amy Adams is wonderful in the lead role and worthy of her inevitable Golden Globe nomination (not sure if she'll make the cut for the Oscar, however). She has definitely earned a spot on my 'girlfriend' list, and that's certainly the higher honor.

No Country For Old Men

Date: November 17
Location: Muvico Boca Raton

No Country For Old Men is not only the best movie of the year (so far), it's possibly the best thing the Coen Brothers have ever done. And if you know me, you know that's high praise. This is the first film I've seen since Pan's Labyrinth that I feel comfortable describing as a flat-out masterpiece. The film is surprising and memorable on so many levels that I don't want to give anything away in my description, so suffice it to say that it works as a heart-in-your-throat thriller, the blackest of comedies, a grungy crime flick and (not least) a powerful meditation on violence, society and the evil of which human beings are capable. Trading the bleak snowscapes of Fargo for the even bleaker deserts of Texas, the Coen Brothers have returned to form with a vengeance.

Black Book

Date: November 13
Location: Clifton Living Room

Master of excess Paul Verhooven brings his signature pulpy style to a most somber topic — World War Two — and delivers a rousing old-school Hollywood movie-movie. Carice van Houten does Oscar-worthy work as the main character, a Jewish songstress who joins the Dutch resistance and goes undercover as the girlfriend of an SS officer. Filled with double-crosses, shootouts and steamy sex scenes, Black Book is the most fun you can have watching Nazis. It also has a moral complexity and a somber pessimism about human nature and the ubiquity of war. Certainly the best thing Veerhoven has done since Robocop, and one of the nicest surprises of the year.

Best Oscar Race Yet?

I've been perusing the early Academy Award predictions and the following titles keep coming up: Atonement, American Gangster, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Juno.

Now, I haven't seen most of those, but they're all exactly the sort of movie I love, and would love to see vie for the Best Picture prize. Just imagine: the Coen Brothers facing off against Paul Thomas Anderson; three crime movies going head to head a year after The Departed was the unlikeliest of winners; Joe Wright's follow-up to the exquisite (and woefully underrated) Pride & Prejudice sitting alongside a quirky Jason Reitman comedy starring Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera and Jason Bateman. I'd be in Oscar Heaven.

Of course, things could change. We might be looking at, say, Into the Wild, In the Valley of Elah, Lions for Lambs and Lust, Caution. But those seem to be long shots, and there isn't much else on the horizon. I'm guessing I'll be pretty happy with the lineup come February.