This video has been floating around for a while. I first freaked out and sent it to all of my friends a couple of weeks ago, when it showed up on Pajiba. It stuck with me, though, as few YouTube videos ever do, so that I felt compelled to share it with all of you. It’s an unusually creative manifestation of the list-making impulse, with well-selected clips and music, on a topic close to many film fans’ hearts–human villains.

Compiler hh1edits cuts a nice swathe through historical cinema, but doesn’t skimp on recent movie manifestations of evil, leading off with Chigurh and later giving a meaty chunk of screen time to Heath Ledger’s much-lauded take on the Joker. I’m very glad Kurt Russell’s wildly underrated Stuntman Mike gets some love. (Click here to read more…)

1. Scraggly beard, awkward silences
Ben Stiller’s side-splitting rendition of Joaquin Phoenix, reminiscent of the actor-turned-rapper’s latest bizarro appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

2. “You commie, homo-loving sons of guns!”
“I want to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me,” continued the self-deprecating Sean Penn moments after accepting his Best Actor statue for “Milk.” Never missing the chance to wax ardent on political matters, Penn railed against Prop 8 and toasted Barack Obama as an “elegant man” before saluting fellow front-runner nominee Mickey Rourke as his “brother.” Classy and heartfelt.

3. From the old … to the new
The newest format of presenting the acting awards, with previous award winners paying tribute to this year’s nominees. Brilliant, innovative and touching: living legends passing the torch to a new generation of acting giants.

4. Hugh Jackman
Gave the shortest opening monologue in Oscar history, commanded the stage admirably in a top-hat-and-tails tribute to movie musicals and sat in Frank Langella’s lap; maybe the most engaging performance by a host since the days of Fred Astaire and Johnny Carson.

5. “Departures” wins
In what was probably the most stunning upset of the night, Japan’s “Departures” upset Israel’s “Waltz with Bashir” for Foreign Language Film honors: an unforeseen turn of events in a category that’s slowly losing any credibility it’s had to begin with. (Click here to read more…)

Put Brad Pitt, the slight octogenarian, side by side with Brad Pitt, the twenty-something heartthrob, and you’ll see why Greg Cannom and Co.’s work on the “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” virtually has these two categories on lock. Through a combination of post-production makeup work and digital wizardry, Fincher’s talented team breathes life into the physical anomaly of Benjamin’s reverse aging with astonishing detail; it’s a triumph of technical prowess that will be talked about for years.

It should be duly noted that in any other year, “The Dark Knight” would be the clear frontrunner for its achievements in these categories. From the dark undertones of a Gotham City decaying from the inside out to the truly frightening, disheveled look of Heath Ledger’s Joker, Nolan’s film is a visual splendor to be celebrated. Together, both “Benjamin Button” and “Dark Knight” outshine their competition considerably; “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” is the third candidate in the Make-up category, and “Iron Man” the third in the Visual Effects category.

David’s Pick: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Makeup, Visual Effects)
Oscar Prediction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Makeup, Visual Effects)
Best Film(s) Not Nominated: Speed Racer (Visual Effects)

As the process of joining together individual shots and crafting coherent narrative sequences, editing is an indispensable facet of the filmmaking process: It allows a film to breathe and expand beyond its origins, provides essential rhythm to moving images, and imbues the resulting product with form and meaning. Eighty years after Sergei Eisenstein established his influential theories on dialectical montage, film editing remains the celebrated “invisible art” of the cinema. 

This year’s Academy Award nominees feature two clear frontrunners. Lee Smith’s work on “The Dark Knight,” a stunning display of both technical razzle-dazzle and old-fashioned elegance, plays an absolutely crucial role in creating the film’s powerful atmosphere of escalation. Its closest competition is the montage-heavy “Slumdog Millionaire,” a film that relies on a dose of quick, concise editing by Chris Dickens to convey its breathless story of love and coming of age amidst harrowing conditions. 

Tellingly, the other three films receiving nominations for Best Film Editing have all been nominated for Best Picture as well: “Milk” (courtesy of first-time nominee Elliot Graham), “Frost/Nixon” (courtesy of Mike Hill and Dan Hanley, Ron Howard’s editing team since 1982’s “Night Shift”), and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (courtesy of Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, the latter having pulled off one of the most spectacular editing achievements in recent years with David Fincher’s “Zodiac”).

David’s Pick: “The Dark Knight”
Oscar Prediction: “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Film(s) Not Nominated: “Ballast,” “WALL·E,” “In Bruges”

Film compositions differ from other musical genres in that they are responsible not only for evoking mood and feeling in listeners but for doing so in the extra dimension of the moving image. If cinema can be considered a marriage between sight and sound, then music is all the more crucial to its success; history provides powerful examples. Take away “Lara’s Theme” and watch “Doctor Zhivago” stripped of its sentimental beauty; omit Ennio Morricone’s score and watch “Once Upon a Time in the West” stripped of its operatic magnificence.

This year’s Academy Award nominees elevated the human spirit in fascinating ways. Just as James Newton Howard’s orchestral tribute to humanity in the face of war matched its stirring subject matter in “Defiance”, so Danny Elfman’s elegiac ode to the indefatigable human spirit did wonders for “Milk”. The haunting allure of Alexandre Desplat’s contribution to “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” contrasted splendidly with A. R. Rahman’s breathless and buoyant soundtrack for “Slumdog Millionaire”. But none of these created as indelible of an impression on me than the score for “WALL·E”, composed by the brilliant Thomas Newman. More than any other score this year, “WALL·E” blurred the distinction between music and moving pictures in such a way that it proved even space-age animation can withhold as much power as films did before the advent of dialogue. (Click here to read more…)

I’ll go ahead and say it now: “The Dark Knight” is my pick for this year’s Best Cinematography Oscar. Wally Pfister replicates the sinister artistry of his work on “Memento” and “Batman Begins” to an extent that goes even deeper beyond the surfaces and shadows of Christopher Nolan’s previous works. Effortlessly juxtaposing elegance and chaos, Pfister tunes the movie for maximum visual impact and imbues Gotham City with trappings of fear and anxiety never before seen in an American superhero film. By the end, I was reeling from the perverse beauty of it all.

But cinema is first and foremost a visual medium, so like any other year, choosing between the most qualified nominees was an extremely difficult task. Bathed in soft hues of sepia and gold, the cinematography of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is easily one of the film’s strongest points. I admire Claudio Miranda’s work not only for its understated elegance, but for its contribution to the elegiac quality of the narrative as well. When Benjamin watches Daisy dance in the moonlight, the visuals are tender, almost Gatsby-esque; when the clockmaker waxes nostalgic and soldiers come back to life, the visuals are stark, almost transcendent. (Click here to read more…)

OK, so Monday is back and I have a cold. It’s been rough, but my girlfriend brought soup and OJ over tonight, which really helped. Now, let me take a peek at some box office numbers and tell you what’s up…

A ha! Like I said, “Bangkok Dangerous” was the only big movie opening this weekend. As it would follow, logically, it was the only one people saw. It pulled in $7.8 million, which isn’t great, but hey, make a better movie next time.

Like a jar of oils, the film market has finally settled down, and the current movies have all sorted themselves into their proper rankings. In second, Tropic Thunder is holding fast. I’ve already spoken at length about that lil’ gem, so I’ll speak no more but to tell you about all the millions it made. $7.2 million, to be exact, which means that “Tropic” has grossed almost $100 million domestically in four weeks. Not bad, until you head down one and spot “The Dark Knight” in third. Yeah, it only made $5.5 million this time around, but in its eight weeks it has made over $500 million. That’s a way off from “Titanic,” which means I’ve lost a bet … but it’s not bad.

It’s mostly crap all the way down, so let me amuse myself by picking some gems out of the list. This week, let’s find out which film has been in theaters the longest. It seems to be…

Wow. After a whopping 49 weeks in theaters, “Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure” is still soldiering on. A National Geographic documentary about historical monsters of the deep, this movie has pulled in less than $20 million in its impressive tenure, which is a little sad.

Critics love it, however. Film review site Rotten Tomatoes has it at a 100% rating, which is rather impressive, with 13 reviews. So check that out.

I just finished reading a pretty scary book. A good book, but a scary book. Contemporary author Cormac McCarthy’s latest Pulitzer Prize winning work, “The Road,” actually came out in 2006. I had wanted to read it since then—only the all too long queue of books to read for school got in the way. That coupled with a chronic forgetfulness about the list of things I want to do eventually led to me sitting alone reading “The Road” yesterday. What reminded me to read it was none other than the interesting recent news that Hollywood has made a film out of the novel, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-Mcphee. For those who haven’t read it, the book takes place on Earth apparently after some cataclysmic disaster has destroyed all of society and nature. A father and son walk a desolate road towards the sea in hopes of finding some means of survival—along the way encountering cold, starvation, and, oh yeah, cannibals. Although it has a message of hope and redemption, it is not for the faint of heart. (Click here to read more…)

Seeing people dress up as characters from a movie isn’t uncommon, especially if it’s a big-budget superhero movie, and it’s Halloween. Seeing people dress up as characters from a movie is also fairly commonplace at midnight release screenings, but only if it’s a very popular and iconic series, if a bit fanboyish. Seeing people dress up as characters from a major motion picture that isn’t coming out for a year and one that most people have never heard of is something else entirely. But it happened—last year, to celebrate the one-year pre-anniversary of the impending release of “Watchmen,” people did just that.

For those of you out of the know, the upcoming superhero movie “Watchmen” is based on a famous and celebrated graphic novel of the same name, by quirky and reclusive graphic novel legend Alan Moore. It’s something of a golden standard, the only graphic novel to make the list of Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels of all Time.” I read it for the first time at the end of my sophomore year in high school, and it changed the way I saw the world. Much of my current philosophy, if not directly lifted from, was strongly inspired by this book. It is amazingly deep and layered, with levels of meaning stacked upon levels, metaphors crossing mediums, wordplay refracting through the images in ways that people who haven’t read graphic novels can’t really grasp. Sort of like “Flatland.” (Click here to read more…)