That means somber biographies – “J. Edgar,” “The Iron Lady,” and “My Week with Marilyn” – will compete with Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” and a few other films that practically scream, “Vote for me!”

So where does that leave “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2?”

The eighth and final film in the ridiculously popular franchise hits Blu-ray and DVD shelves this week, a timely reminder that it deserves serious consideration in the biggest Academy Award category, Best Picture.

Normally, popcorn fare is excluded from most Oscar chatter. Even “The Dark Knight,” a film which delighted critics and audiences alike, couldn’t nab a Best Picture nod.

But this season is shaping up to be a particularly weak one for Best Picture contenders.

Recent films like “Moneyball” and “J. Edgar” earned mixed to solid reviews at best, while the early buzz on director Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” is solid, not terrific. “The Iron Lady’s” released date just got bumped to late-late December, not a sign of confidence from the studio. “The Help” might slide into a Best Picture slot simply by being both topical and uplifting, but the film’s 75 percent “Fresh” rating at RottenTomatoes.com hardly screams artistic excellence.

And spare us the talk that Woody Allen’s overrated “Midnight in Paris” deserves Oscar consideration. Has the bar been set so low for Allen that even his mediocre fare fires up award chatter?

“Deathly Hallows – Part 2″ is a terrific film, both a stunning visual achievement and an emotionally satisfying coda to a complicated film franchise. Oscar voters often nominate films that mean something, or that cap an historic film achievement. Just consider the Oscar coronation for “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,” the third film in that triumphant fantasy franchise.

The final “Harry Potter” film deserves that kind of emotional voting, but it shouldn’t need it. It’s good enough as is, an epic tale of good versus evil that proved long-running franchises can end on the highest of notes.

“I personally like to see films that are the work of as singular a consciousness as possible,” Stevens explained about his decision to do two exhausting and difficult jobs at once. But as with everything, there was a price to be paid. “It’s like trying to be a traffic cop and write a poem at the same time. You need an executive head to handle all the vast paraphernalia of moviemaking. You need another, more sensitive head to get the delicate human emotional values you are trying to put on film.”

The making of Shane, then — indeed, the making of most great films — is largely a tale of an artist using all of his powers and guile and energy to bend the technology and the paraphernalia to the arduous task of making those delicate emotional values come to life on an empty screen.

*****

The opening of Shane. A little boy, played by young Brandon De Wilde, stalks a large-horned buck with an unloaded rifle. The buck is startled by something in the distance, looks up — and there, poised right between its antlers, is a distant horseman lazily riding toward us.

You are George Stevens, there on the ground in Jackson Hole one morning, with dozens of cast and crew waiting around for you to decide how to capture such an image. What do you do?

“I sent out and got a little elk and a couple of bucks with big spreads,” says Stevens.

We lined it up and then worked with this buck to have him in the foreground; we had some dry stuff or weed up there that he went after a few times. We rehearsed with Alan Ladd and got Ladd back — he’s going to move along at a signal — then we moved the camera over to where the buck was grazing. There’s a fella out there, hidden back in Ladd’s direction just out of frame, with a bucket and some rocks in it. During the take the fella shook the rocks; it sounded a little bit like rain. Once we did it and the buck looked toward the rocks. We took it again, the buck stayed right there with his good downtown hay (it’s unusual for him), and on cue, a silent cue, we watched this rider come along.

And it was a coincidence, the horn was right in the middle — it was awful good. So I decided to shoot the works, since I was going to get lucky. I kept it quiet, let the animal graze, got Alan all the way back there, silent signal for him to start on, silent signal for the camera, he’s coming on and pretty soon we call up the cue for the buck. Not quite. A little more cue. He looks up, and Alan is right between the antlers.

And that, more often than not, is how movie magic happens. “Three takes,” says Stevens. “You’re either going to get it or you’re not going to get it. There’s no use persisting; it just had to work that way.”

*****

Fifty-five minutes into Shane. A boy, learning how to shoot a weapon for the first time, asks the man he idolizes to show him how it’s done. “What do you want me to shoot at?” asks the man. The boy glances around. “The little white rock over there, see?”

You’re George Stevens, thinking about World War II as you make this Western. Above all, you’re keen to convey to a somewhat innocent audience the notion that “A gunshot. . . is a holocaust. It’s not a gesture of bravado, it’s death.” What do you do?

“The effect on the audience was much greater than normal,” says Stevens, justifiably proud of his solution. To start, he increased the power of this scene by deliberately muting the power of all the scenes previous. “I very carefully kept gunshots out of it up until that point,” he says of the film’s opening hour, “to make the first one more emphatic.”

Then he leveraged the full power of editing, taking what had been a fairly leisurely paced movie and suddenly assaulting the audience with a half-dozen shots in rapid, machine-gun succession:

Shane draws!
The boy grimaces as the blast rocks his ears!
The boy’s mother, watching from the fence, gasps in horror!
The rock bounces toward us low on the ground, with Shane standing tall in the background, shrouded by gunsmoke!
The boy gapes, eyes wide!
And as the smoke clears, and the gunshot echo fades away among the mountains of the Teton Range, and the farm’s chickens clatter in fear, Shane’s strangely meditative face comes into view, in deep contemplation of and respect for the power of his weapon.

Six shots in as many seconds, a pace that leaves the audience as breathless and impressed as the boy.

But even that wasn’t enough. “In most Westerns,” Stevens complained, “you know, people are shooting off guns all the time, until you don’t even notice it anymore. I wanted people to be really jolted out of their seats the first time Shane uses his gun.” And so decades before surround sound became the norm, Stevens decided to do what he could to bring off the same type of sonic grandeur using comparatively primitive 1950s monaural speakers. “We took the pistol sound out,” he says, “and put in the sound of an eight-inch howitzer canon, alongside a rifle shot. So it had the highs of the rifle shot and the expanding boom of the howitzer.”

If you talk to old-timers who saw Shane in the theater in 1953, you’ll often hear them remembering the sheer power and impressiveness of those gunshots. The effect was wonderful. As Big Hollywood commenter “blueunicorn6” said a few weeks back, “The gunshots really rock you. I think Stevens wanted those shots to be loud.”

Yep.

*****

“If any actor has ever created a character who is the personification of evil,” says filmmaker Woody Allen, “it is Jack Palance.” It’s not too much to say that his portrayal of Jack Wilson in Shane ranks right up alongside such quietly venomous portrayals as Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931), Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter (1955), Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List (1993). That he manages to make such an unforgettable mark in a relative handful of scenes makes his achievement all the more impressive (perhaps only Neville Brand in the 1950 noir classic D.O.A. has managed to create a similar gleeful maleficence using even less screen time).

You’re George Stevens, looking over at Jack Palance, who is over in the corner practicing his quick draw technique and quietly hissing his lines to himself, getting into his character Method-style. You know that this largely unknown actor somehow has to measure up to Alan Ladd, one of the world’s most popular movie personalities. With much less screen time in which to operate, Palance has to be as much a villain as Shane is a hero, absolutely terrifying in his deadly skills and sinister potentialities. The crew is getting impatient as the sun rises, waiting for you to tell them how to setup the day’s first shot.

What do you do?

Stevens, as it happened, decided to break all the rules. Most movies show a major villain cantering into town on a towering black charger, with quivering mothers shuttering windows as the little ones hide in their petticoats and their men look down at their shoes in shame. In contrast, the director of Shane makes his town look deserted as Palance rides down a muddy street on a horse specially picked to be too small for the actor. The animal almost creeps as it walks, as if it is trying to be quiet with each step, and the effect is subtly grotesque, a kind of dark mirror image of when Shane majestically came down from the mountains in the beginning of the film. “He’s just bad news,” says Woody Allen about that shot. “Serpentine.”

Then Stevens has Palance enter the local tavern, and in the middle of his walking toward the camera, for no apparent reason, he does an odd dissolve, showing Palance fade away from the background and reappear in the foreground.

“It’s one of the most puzzling dissolves I’ve ever seen,” Allen admits. “I can’t imagine what it was for. It must have been to cover up a mistake. I can’t think of any other reason for it.”

I can — the effect turns Palance into more than a mere man. He becomes a baleful specter possessing the power to almost disappear and reappear at will.

Stevens takes this idea further in a later scene when Shane and his nemesis are sizing each other up while the other protagonists argue a few feet away. One of our FCML commenters, “nolotrippen,” pointed this out after our first installment of this series, when he marveled at how “Shane (Alan Ladd) just watching the evil Jack Wilson (Jack Palance) getting on his horse in the background while the main conversation between other characters goes on is one of the most masterful scenes ever. Very little happens, yet it shows volumes about the hero and the villain.” Another regular in our comments section, “LBOscarMayer,” added, “That hesitation thing that Jack Palance does — where he stops for a moment in mid air — while getting on his horse is mesmerizing! Whoever came up with that — genius!”

As it turns out, the man who came up with how to get Palance to mount his horse like a creepy ballerina was George Stevens. Remember, Stevens spent years filming slapstick comedies with geniuses like Laurel and Hardy, and many of the old tricks they used decades earlier were still in his mental toolbox. Specifically, he remembered how they were able to achieve all sorts of interesting physical effects in the old days by first performing certain actions in reverse order and then playing the film backwards through the projector.

So for this scene in Shane, he asked Palance to first get off his horse, swinging his leg out wide and taking his sweet time lowering himself down, using the vastly improved control gravity gives you when you lower yourself down instead of push yourself up. Then he had the film printed backwards in post-production. The result in the final film is Palance seeming to get on his horse in an eerie, almost impossibly muscular fashion, pushing his body up with his leg without a hint of the quivering or weakness that would usually accompany such a feat. As our commenter said, it’s “mesmerizing,” and becomes yet another sign of the villain’s preternatural powers of malevolence.

*****

But above all, audiences remember Palance in the famous scene with actor Elisha Cook Jr., taunting and bullying him from the plank walkway, his every movement sleek and graceful as a shark drifting in for the kill, while Cook’s character slides and stumbles in the mud, hopelessly outmatched. Grim peals of thunder echo across the plain as the sun glows wanly through grey clouds, as if nature itself knows that death is in the air.

All of those details weren’t in the book, nor were they serendipitous uses of things Mother Nature gave him to work with. Every bit was dreamed up by Stevens.

If you’re the director, how do you pull it all off?

Cook remembers Stevens stalking around the town set on the night before the scene was to be shot, thinking through the logistics. In the morning, he ordered the entire street sprayed down with water until the dirt became a sea of treacherous mud. The dreary atmosphere was made by having the lab print the film a bit dark, and the thunder was added in post-production by the sound editors.

Stevens also worked over Cook himself to get him in the proper mindset. “He called me aside,” the actor remembered. “He said, ‘You know, I’ve got you eight weeks on the picture, and I’m stuck with you. You’re the worst ac­tor I ever saw in my life bar none’.” One can imagine the feelings of fear and anger that coursed through Cook’s mind upon getting this awful news. “What are you gonna say?” Cook said, thinking back on how he was snookered. “You don’t say anything. What are you gonna do?” Only after everything was shot did Cook learn the truth: “He wanted me terrified and not terrified.”

When it was time for Cook to bite the dust, Stevens’ technical adviser told him that men who are killed with a single shot fall forward. But just like with Shane’s first use of a gun, Stevens wanted Palance’s first draw to be just as memorable. So once again, he relied on an old Laurel and Hardy gag. “Let’s put him on a wire!” Cook remembers Stevens exclaiming. “So, under that curious outfit I had on, they had me wired [with a harness], and when [Wilson's] gun went off it pulled me six feet through the air and into the mud.”

After the scene was shot, the ornery director who had treated Cook so badly let down his mask, and Cook realized that it had all been to make the scene work. “You dumb son of a bitch!” Stevens said to him with a broad smile. “That’s what happens to you when you stand up for a principle!”

*****

“Pa’s got things for you to do! And mother wants you! I know she does! Shane! Shaaaaane! Come baaaack!”

The most famous scene in the film, and one of the most memorable endings in film history. No one who sees it ever forgets it.

How does one craft such a wonderful conclusion? It’s not taken verbatim from the book, and Stevens pointedly leaves much of its subtext to the viewer’s imagination. The strange expressions of the little boy as he watches his hero ride away are left unexplained. We aren’t sure if the last shot of Shane, his left arm sort of dangling at his side as his horse canters through the graveyard and into the mountains, means that he is dying, or is just overcome with a weariness of the soul.

There comes a point in talking about this stuff when the usual anecdotes and stories are wholly inadequate to the task of answering such a question. The creative choices become so numerous, instinctive, and intertwined with the threads of the rest of the film — the poetic brushstrokes so fine and variegated — that all you can do is sit back in awe and shake your head in appreciation.

In her critical biography Giant: George Stevens, A Life on Film, Marilyn Ann Moss tells how, late in life, Stevens sat in on a screening of Shane with some students at a university, and gave a sort of running commentary to what was up on the screen. The transcript of his remarks is a rambling stream of consciousness that comes as close as anything to understanding how much focused, brilliant creativity goes into making an ending like that. I quote at length:

I notice in taking it apart [that] there’s very little unity to the film as shot; because there are so many different pieces. They’re inside the saloon with a variety of shots around the room, and the reverse angle shot, and the boy’s face coming under the door — all shot in the studio; then, outside there is the shot where Shane is sitting on a horse and the boy is talking to him — shot on location, so he can leave the front of the saloon. There, again, is the camera around from Shane’s point of view into the boy’s face, taken in the studio at another time — sometime after the work that was done in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Then there’s the shot, shooting up at Shane on the horse, seated in the saddle in front of the saloon. And then a strange “Ring-around-the-rosy” business in which Shane leaves the front of the saloon and heads toward the back of the saloon from another angle, then back to the front of the saloon when the boy comes around the end of the saloon, heading toward the Teton Peaks, the Grand Teton in the background there, at the right time, when the cloud happened to be with us, with a long focal-length lens to give the mountains some structure and some height — because it’s a grand thing, with the horse moving into the distance.

Then the boy coming around the building — a wide angle shot; then a reverse angle with the boy in the foreground and the horse in the middle distance going away toward the Tetons; and then around for what became the major aspect of the scene — the boy’s face. . . as he sees he’s not convincing Shane. Further shots with the camera now moved away from the saloon, following the horse and rider — it’s the horse and rider and the mountain. The same shot on the boy, back into his face, and, eventually Joey weakens — having the first experience in his life when something really doesn’t work his way — when he realizes Shane is not coming back. And his spirit dims a little bit and he grows up a lot. . . and then in the far distance, Shane going away. . . then back into Joey’s life with him looking rather bewildered and somewhat wiser. And then we’re way up in the mountain looking back as Shane comes toward us, going into his never-never-world, whatever that might be. And there’s a distant landscape below, where the farmers were, where we spent the hours of our adventure with them, and so to fadeout.

As we can see, it breaks up into quite a bit of work as far as shooting is concerned. It has to do with a variety of the aspects of the view that [gives it] an immediacy and a kind of continuity. And also, hopefully, in editing, a graceful relationship of scenes, so that the relationship of one shot isn’t repetitious with the following shot, but a great difference of relationship of size of figure. The size of the figure in one shot being small and diminu­tive with the horse going away, then the face of the boy being immediate and close, which gives a kind of charge to the editing of the film.

All of that highly thoughtful creativity, made up of equal amounts of technique, craft, and artistry, and combining Stevens’ varied decisions about focal lengths, music, pacing, composition, light, shot selection — the works. And all for what?

For what was expressed recently by Big Hollywood commenter “IMCONSERVATIVE,” who says “I saw it for the first time over 40 years ago on TV and cried at the end. Now, 40+ years later, and having seen it several times over the years, I still cry at the end.”

Stevens would have loved to hear that, even as he sighed in exhaustion. “You have a Grand Central Station atmosphere around you,” he said wearily of being a director, “and in all that wilderness of people and machinery perhaps the only thing you are trying to record is a small boy, crying goodbye. With all that organization you feel you ought to be filming a battlefield. You have to squeeze so much grapefruit — to get so little juice.”

Previous posts in the series “Jack Schaefer, George Stevens, and Shane”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

For those who haven’t seen it, “Quiz Show” is about the, um, quiz show scandals that rocked TV in 1958. America tuned in by the millions to watch “Twenty One,” sponsored by Geritol, the “fast-acting tonic, high-potency tonic that makes you feel stronger…fast.” Turns out the show were completely rigged, and it all comes crashing down…because of a snub.

Ralph Fiennes, fresh off Schindler’s List, plays Charles Van Doren, the latest sensation sweeping the nation. The son of noted poet and author, Mark Van Doren (Paul Scofield), Charles teaches at Columbia University, and tries out for Tic-Tac-Dough on a whim. The producers, Dan Enright (David Paymer) and Albert Freeman (Hank Azaria), love him. He’s the answer to their prayers. See, the reigning champion is an odd character, equal parts dork and blowhard, a Queens’ native named Herbert Stempel (John Turturro).

Stempel sees everything as a conspiracy to keep him down – not because he’s a crass jerk, but because he’s Jewish. Attanasio gives Stempel some cringe-funny lines, like when he offers Goodwin a rugelach: Come on, they’re a Jewish delicacy. Before Toby eats it. While we don’t like Herbie, we empathize with him and feel his humiliation. We know he’s a blue collar guy because he watches professional wrestling. Word has come down from Geritol’s Martin Rittenhome (Martin Scorsese): Herbie no longer moves Geritol. The other major character is Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a Congressional Attorney who longs to make headlines with a big “collar.” Who better than TV?

The characters are wonderfully complex. Herbie’s supposed to be a whistleblower, but he cheated, too, a fact that breaks his wife Toby’s heart. Worse, he’s an attention whore who in the words of one character, has to be “dragged from the spotlight with his teethmarks still on it!” He believes Enright promised him a panel show, but when Enright doesn’t deliver, he goes after the show. Enright is a calculating, shrewd manipulator at every turn, compassionately sending Herbie to a psychoanalyst on his own dime, then offering the bill to Goodwin as proof of Herbie’s mental delusions.

On the other hand, Van Doren is a WASP all the way. He’s so WASP-y his family plays a Shakespeare quoting game. For fun. His dad doesn’t have a TV, has never seen the show, and thinks it’s a distraction from Charles’ teaching. But this never comes across as overbearing, there’s genuine love behind Mark’s desires for his son to succeed in Academia. He never condescends him about TV, it’s just a generation gap. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story, and the part that could have been both the most boring and the most clichéd.

On the surface, few people could relate to this elite family. They write “Happy Birthday, Father” on Mark’s birthday cake. Father! Did I mention they play a Shakespeare quoting game? For fun?! But Charles’ desire to make something of himself is very endearing, and Fiennes creates a character that we deeply like, even though we know he’s wrong. What I also love about the character is that he never wanted to cheat. When the idea is proposed to him, he rejects it before adding, “Was that a part of the test?”

For all his smarts, he is deeply naïve, wondering how they could cheat if the questions are locked in a bank vault. That the bank vault canard fooled the public and Charles speaks volumes about the naïve attitude Americans had concerning mass media at the time. Enright promises no cheating, “So pure, it floats,” he purrs. But Charles wins on a question he already got right in the audition. In the aftermath of his win, he’s swarmed with admirers. Herbie offers a hand in congratulation, but Charles doesn’t see him for the throng of people. Herbie walks away, feeling snubbed and vengeful. His rage intensifies when he hears someone remark, “Better to have a true intellectual than a freak with a sponge brain.” Thus begins Herbie’s obsession with taking down Charles Van Doren.

Charles becomes instantly intoxicated with all the attention he receives. Time magazine covers, Today Show appearances, and throngs of adoring fans. At one point, as a limo drops him off at school, he pretends to tie his show. In reality, he’s waiting for the classrooms to empty so he can be worshipped and adored on his way to his office. Later, with Goodwin bearing down, he calls Enright from a pay phone, and we see the adoring crowds starting to get under his skin. Before long, he avoids the crowds, asking the limo driver to drop him off behind the studio. But he remains likable, and is truly a good son: he gives his father a TV for his birthday. Mark tries to watch the show, but snaps off the TV, saying it’s too “nerve-racking,” Scofield’s voice cracking so believably on the line.

As Goodwin begins investigating Charles, they become sorta friends. Goodwin finds himself torn between his desire to fit in with this intellectual clique and his desire to bring down TV. Through exhaustive research, he discovers another player, a beatnik artist named Snodgrass appeared on the show months earlier. When he answered a question correctly, Jack Barry responded, “I’m sorry that’s – waitaminute!” Goodwin seeks him out. Snodgrass had mailed the questions to himself days before his appearance on the show. It’s the smoking gun he needs, and when he confronts Enright, we see the first crack in the producer’s armor. “Why would he do that?” he wonders aloud, before using the only arrow in his quiver – TV- meekly asking Goodwin “How would you like to be on a panel show?”

It all boils down to a hearing before a Congressional sub-committee. Charles is offered several chances to come clean, but he’s held steady to his word that there is no impropriety. Goodwin doesn’t want to hurt Charles. His wife tells him, “Putting the quiz shows on trial without Charles Van Doren is like putting on Hamlet without Hamlet,” adding, “You’re the Uncle Tom of the Jews.” Ouch. Attanasio’s dialogue is great, and the final exchange between Charles and Goodwin is amazing. Charles poses a hypothetical question to Goodwin: if someone offered you all this money to simply answer questions you knew the answer to, would you do it? Goodwin’s terse “No” sparks Charles to say, “And I would?”

Of course we know he would, but as for Goodwin, it’s easy to take the high road when the offer is purely hypothetical. As Charles feels the noose tightening, Freeman assures him, “Everybody knows the magician doesn’t saw the lady in half. This is show business.”

We know that this will be the final defense. But for Enright and Freeman’s dodging and denying, it might be a valid one. The cast is uniformly strong, but no one shines as bright as Scofield, playing arguably the movie’s only honorable character. We feel his hurt and shame as Charles confesses, and again when he learns Charles will be forced to resign from Columbia. His scenes with Fiennes are among the strongest in the film, like one where they share a slice of cake and Mark says, “Mother always said you were the actor in the family.” Wow. Fiennes effortlessly captures the infatuation, the intoxication, and ultimate disgust – with fame. His walk of shame towards the waiting cameras after his admission of guilt is tragic and inevitable. Rob Morrow holds his own, but he could have toned down the accent. Turturro is suitably annoying, and Azaria & Paymer knock it out of the park.

The finger wagging at corporate greed is tiresome, but expected. At one point Goodwin advises the deeply guilty Enright to roll over on NBC and Geritol because, “They’re the ones making all the money.” The anti-corporate message mars the final act, as does Goodwin’s melodramatic observation slash warning, “I thought I was going to get television. The truth is, television’s going to get us.” Still, the movie is riveting, beautifully shot by Michael Ballhaus, well acted, unexpectedly funny, and until the end, offers sharp observations about human nature.

If those three words don’t stir up all kinds of nostalgia for the summer of ’82 when HBO aired the original “Clash of the Titans” 9 times a day (in ’83 it was “Beastmaster,” in ’84, “Eddie and the Cruisers”), you probably shouldn’t plunk down the price of admission. What we bring to the movies plays a big role in what we get from the movies (which is why critics are absolutely useless). And if cheese and nostalgia don’t play an important role in this particular film-going choice you might find yourself a little disappointed.

Sam Worthington is Perseus, a demigod and bastard son of Zeus (Liam Neeson). He just doesn’t yet know this because as a baby a whole lot of mythology occurred that resulted in him being found by a kind fisherman and his family and raised as such. It’s only after man declares war on the gods of Olympus and his family is killed that Perseus unknowingly starts down the road towards his own destiny as he sets out for revenge against Hades (Ralph Fiennes), the god of the Underworld responsible for his family’s demise.

Hades and Zeus are estranged brothers but man’s insolence drives them to form an uneasy alliance. Zeus just wants some appreciation. Hades wants to betray Zeus and rule over everything in order to spread evil throughout humanity. The endgame involves a huge sea monster known as the Kraken. A fierce beast that we’re told can’t be killed. Man doesn’t have a chance in this war. But driven by rage, Perseus doesn’t much care.

The weakest part of the story is in trying to figure out exactly what Zeus wants. His motivation makes no sense (actually, it’s all over the place) and that he would be dumb enough to get mixed up with Hades is even more confusing. What is interesting is seeing how these two fine actors found themselves together again 17 years after “Schindler’s List.”

The best way to describe the story would be as a quest; which is a polite way of saying “episodic.” What do you expect? This is “Clash of the Titans.”  We’re here to see creatures and swords and sandals and the head of Medusa. And in that respect, the film delivers. This is one of those movies where for the most part you feel you wasted your money until a big thrilling sequence comes along that un-numbs your butt and finally does make it worth the price of that admission.

The scene in Medusa’s lair is one of those sequences. Another of the film’s more winning qualities is an unexpected sense of humor. I was also surprised by how adorable my wife looks in big 3D glasses.

As Perseus, Worthington is a problem. Hollywood has embraced him as the Next Big Thing, and while it’s nice to see masculinity making a big screen comeback, he’s a bit of a blank slate. It’s like someone grabbed a faceless henchman out of the chorus line of a James Bond movie and made him a star. “Titans” is a film in desperate need of a leading man with personality. 25 years ago, Schwarzenegger would’ve turned this into an instant pulp classic.

WARNING: DO NOT SEE THE 3D VERSION. “Titans’” 3D conversion was a cynical last minute decision by the studio which resulted in a movie that looks way too dark. Normally, to compensate for this, 3D films are produced at much brighter levels. But since the decision came after it had already been shot (and “Avatar” broke the bank), with the glasses on many of the scenes are noticeably dark. It’s a big distraction in certain places (especially the action scenes) and I promise you won’t miss a thing in regular 2D.

Actually, you won’t miss much skipping it altogether. The special effects aren’t very good and lack the charm the great Ray Harryhausen brought to everything, including the original. There’s a surprising campiness to Olympus that probably wasn’t intentional, and too much stuff happens for no discernible reason — like the resolution of the final battle between Perseus and Hades. You will ask yourself: Where did that come from?

But somehow I still had fun; much more fun than either “Avatar” or “Alice in Wonderland” delivered, dark screen and all.

You wait for it.

You wait for it.

And then it happens: “Release the Kraken!”

You can’t put a price on feeling fifteen again, if only for a moment.

What follows is a list of the Top 10 performances of the last quarter century.  It focuses on lead roles, or at least substantial ones – no cameos, thank you.  Interestingly, there are no straight comic performances here, and many of the roles are villains.  And it is also focused on movies people have actually heard of. 

So, this is not an exhaustive list – it overlooks plenty of great performances.  But it is my list and based on my criteria alone – and I’m sure I’ll hear about my myriad defects of insight, taste, breeding and general mental competence in the comments.  For example, Daniel Day Lewis is missing because I decided not to invest three hours into There Will Be Blood (2007) since after seeing the “I drink your milkshake!” clip I just can’t take it seriously. 

Johnny Depp is missing for his Captain Jack Sparrow character from the Pirates of the Caribbean films because he’s mildly amusing for about the first hour or so of this seemingly endless series but eventually makes me long to walk the plank off into the blessedly Depp-free depths of the briny. 

Leonardo Di Caprio is missing because he’s always terrible. I’m sure my passing him over will make him cry all the way to the supermodel bank.

And you film snobs out there are out of luck. This list completely ignores foreign language films – if you’re outraged at my glaring omission of Migbor Ombungliani’s shattering portrayal of Yegiv the Goatherd in the Albanian Dogme 95 epic The Thousand Meaningless Agonies of My Existence, you need to find yourself a different list.  And probably a girlfriend. 

Speaking of girls, there are not many here.  It just worked out that way, and I’m not sure why.  But this is a pure meritocracy.  If you want a quota system, you probably need to hit the Huffington Post.  Of course, on the HP, half the Top Ten would be performances from Brokeback Mountain with the rest of the slots spread out among the various dreary, America-hating, soldier-sliming, anti-war movies that have zipped through the theaters since 9/11 on the way to their final reward in the Blockbuster remainder bins (“At number seven, we have Ryan Phillip as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Stop-Loss , followed by number six, some actor you never heard of as the emotionally shattered, psychotic vet in Redacted ….”).

So here are the top ten performances of the last 25 years, in order:

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10.  Denzel Washington – Training Day (2001):  Denzel Washington is so good because crooked LAPD cop Alonzo Harris is so damn bad – he’s like the Antichrist with a badge.  There’s an incredible smoothness to his performance, as if all the goodness of his previous characters was seamlessly turned 180 degrees.  It’s his comfort in the role that is so mesmerizing – there is nothing “actory” about his performance, though of course (minor spoiler) the character himself is pretending to be something he is not throughout the movie.  The way he talks, the way he moves, his ease in that sordid world – it is all so different from the Denzel Washington we’ve known before.  The movie itself is watchable, but kind of dopey.  But Washington?  You can’t look away.

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9.  R. Lee Ermey – Full Metal Jacket (1987):  Some may say that Ermey simply did in front of Stanley Kubrick’s camera what he had done for years as a real USMC drill instructor.  To some extent, that might be accurate, but remember that being a drill instructor is itself a kind of performance.  While the amazing barracks scene takes the Basic Training experience to the nth degree, there is a lot of truth to it, as I found out when I reported to Basic at Ft. Sill about a month after seeing this movie.  I vividly recall Drill Sergeant Whittlesey fulminating to our formation about our utter inability to meet even the lowest standards of competence when, in what was undoubtedly a flash of insanity, I turned my head slightly from the rigid position of attention and saw the other drill sergeants cracking up.  Ermey’s performance is dead-on and unforgettable, and not just to those of us who have experienced the delights of Basic Training firsthand.

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8.  Kevin Spacey – American Beauty (1999):  The Nineties were the Age of Spacey, with stunning showcases in Swimming with Sharks (1994), Seven (1995), The Usual Suspects (1995) and L.A. Confidential (1997).  However, his turn as suburban loser turned rebel Lester Burnham best captures the kind of calm, semi-smarmy, cynical detachment that Spacey does better than anyone else.  Through Spacey, you can feel Lester’s angst, understand his moral quandaries, and see him come out of the shell he retreated into rather than face the world.  It’s a great performance in a movie that is often frustrating in its treatment of military men as sexually-repressed sociopaths, such a hackneyed Hollywood cliché that the filmmakers should have been embarrassed to wheel it out again.  Spacey’s work actually makes it worth wading through that nonsense.     

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7.  Helen Mirren – The Queen (2006):  Mirren brought to life a living person, the Queen of England, a relic of an age when people actually considered the idea of “royalty” as something more than the joke it is.  The essential ridiculousness of the concept of a monarch aside, Mirren’s Elizabeth is a woman of values a half-century out of date, values that had allowed Britain to survive the Depression and the Blitz and to defeat the Axis.  But Mirren shows how the Queen had grown detached from her subjects, a people who have become vulgar, sentimental and maudlin in an age of celebrity and who choose to idolize a feel-good empty vessel like Lady Diana over a monarch who symbolizes a mature, strong and faithful nation.  Watching this pampered but smart, tough but cunning woman deal with the changes (mostly for the worse) in her country before the backdrop of the death of “the People’s Princess” is riveting.  The Queen is a great film about a formerly great people and their descent into juvenile mawkishness (their awesome warriors excepted), and its impact largely comes from Mirren’s staggering achievement in the lead role.

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6.  Val Kilmer – Tombstone (1993):  I have no idea what “I’m your huckleberry” is supposed to mean, but I do know that Val Kilmer was incredible as the tubercular sawbones Doc Holiday in this retelling of the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral tale. It’s no one note performance – you can see he’s sometimes scared even behind the smartass, ironic demeanor, but that dose of reality (compounded by the toll he shows his vices and his consumption taking upon him) only makes the character come more alive.  Mention Tombstone to anyone and the first thing you’ll hear is the name “Val Kilmer.”  That says it all.

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5.  Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada (2006):  Yeah, I saw this movie about ladies in the fashion industry and, dammit, I liked it.  They’ll probably take back my Airborne wings and break my cavalry saber for admitting it.  But you gotta give credit where credit is due, and Streep deserves it.  Her Miranda Priestly is best known for overbearing arrogance, but that’s only a part of her character.  Streep actually lets us peer inside and see her humanity, to understand why she demands excellence, and to see the price she pays for holding herself to her own exacting standards.  The movie wimps out a bit by not forcing the heroine to really confront and deal with the choices the Miranda character faced – things just sort of work out for the heroine deus ex machina-style thanks to an unconvincing, off-screen intervention by Miranda herself.  But while the movie finds an easy way out, Streep’s performance takes the character down a hard road and turns a caricature into a character.

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4.  Steve Coogan – 24 Hour Party People (2002):  This is probably the “smallest” of the pictures on the list, but it’s one of the best.  Coogan plays the real-life British music impresario Tony Wilson, who discovered and championed bands like Joy Division in the late-70s and 80s.  Coogan takes the role and runs with it, totally inhabiting the character in an often surreal portrayal that captures all the excitement, excess and exhilaration of the times.  Beyond the fascinating story (especially the first half involving Joy Division) and the incredible music (buy the soundtrack now), Coogan’s performance sticks with you as a real, larger-than-life character made both human and more than human by an incredible actor.

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3.  Sharon Stone – Casino (1995):  Stone got a bad rap for Basic Instinct (1992), where her cervix seemed to overshadow what really was a great femme fatale turn in a really good, really pulpy film noir classic.  In her heyday in the ’90s, Stone was actually Hollywood’s only real movie star, in the way actresses used to be stars.  She was talented and beautiful, but distinctive too – she had that intangible something that put her on a plane above her peers.  In Casino, as De Niro’s harpy of a wife Ginger, she uses that glamour to show why De Niro’s character would fall for – and keep being drawn back to – a woman who redefines the term “bad news.”  It is a relentless, heartfelt, devastating performance that makes you care (a little bit) for her as she meets the fate she has earned even as you let out a sigh of relief knowing she won’t be back to wreak more havoc. 

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2.  Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight (2008):  Even the conventional wisdom gets it right once in a while.  Since just about everyone on Earth has seen it, there’s no real reason to talk about why it’s such an incredible performance.  Ledger got a lot of praise for Brokeback Mountain (2005), but his performance there was just a collection of scowls, tics and mumbles that constitute nothing more than what Hollywood thinks real gay cowboys are like.  As with the movie itself, most of the acclaim was simply wishful thinking – they loved the subject so they had to praise the portrayals.  There’s no wishful thinking here – this was acting far beyond what some comic book movie had any right to incorporate.  And it makes the loss of Ledger to the scourge of drugs that much more of a waste. 

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1.  Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List (1993):  This is the most terrifying portrait of pure evil ever put on the screen, made all the more horrifying by a performance that shows how a real-life normal man consciously chose to immerse himself in darkness and luxuriated in it, who willingly paid a terrible price in exchange for becoming, for a time, a dark god with the power of life and death.  Fiennes earned a Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the real war criminal Amon Goeth, but this was truly the lead role.  Goeth was the Nazi commander of a forced labor camp that he turned into a private kingdom subject only to his cruel and sick whims.  In scenes like where Goeth uses a high powered rifle to amuse himself by picking off victims from the porch of his mansion, Fiennes shows us a cultured, intelligent man who makes a deliberate decision to embrace evil.  He shows us that the potential for evil lurks inside all of us just as Oskar Schindler’s example teaches that the potential for good exists there too.  What is so powerful is how Fiennes shows that Goeth chose to experience the transitory joy of wickedness knowing it would lead to his death.  It is a performance that will leave you shaken.

And here are some honorable mentions:  Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987), Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), and Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard in The Fugitive (1993) were all memorable.  Robert De Niro was great as the taciturn criminal in Heat (1995) (Al Pacino also deserves a shout-out for his ferocious and highly entertaining scenery chewing, but I would not call it “good” acting).  As great as Anthony Hopkins was as Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs (1991), Brian Cox was even better in a smaller role as the cannibalistic convict in 1986’s Manhunter.  The less said about the sequel Hannibal (2001) the better, though it also featured Ray Liotta.  Liotta gets a nod for Goodfellas, as do Bobby De Niro and Joe Pesci (and for that matter, those last two should also be mentioned regarding the aforementioned Casino). 

And to further rile the members of Team Snooty, let’s not forget Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988).  Yeah, artistes, I went there.

Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is the odds-on Best Picture winner, and it expanded to about 600 additional playdates this weekend for a total screen count of 2,224. The other four contenders for Hollywood’s biggest prize, however, are on a combined 2,508 screens. That means that they are essentially done with their theatrical engagements in the US (barring a truly shocking upset). Even if you wanted to see the other four nominees, you might have trouble finding them at your local multiplex – especially if you live outside a major city.

The United States has approximately 40,000 individual movie screens. Only 11% of them are showing a Best Picture nominee this weekend. That speaks to how decidedly unpopular these movies are. For comparison in 1998, there were about 34,000 screens in the US, and on Oscar weekend 7,586 of them had a Best Picture nominee showing. That’s 22% of all American screens showing a Best Picture contender.

Here is how the Oscar weekend screen counts for 1998 and this year stack up.

1998
Titanic – 3,169 screens
Good Will Hunting – 1,805 screens
As Good As It Gets – 1,604 screens
L.A. Confidential – 723 screens
The Full Monty – 285 screens

2009
Slumdog Millionaire – 2,244 screens
The Reader – 962 screens
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 754 screens
Milk – 411 screens
Frost/Nixon – 381 screens

Slumdog Millionaire has moved from quirky underdog to beloved box office juggernaut. This weekend, Danny Boyle’s Mumbai masterpiece will close in on the magical $100M barrier.

OSCAR WEEKEND PERFORMANCE FOR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
2,224 screens
$2.1M Friday
$7.5M 3-Day
$97.46M cume
$118M Projected Cume

THE READER
962 screens
$705,000 Friday
$2.53M 3-Day
$22.9M cume
$29M Projected Cume

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
754 screens
$320,000 Friday
$1.12M 3-Day
$124.1M cume
$129M Projected Cume

MILK
411 screens
$265,000 Friday
$928,000 3-Day
$28M cume
$34M Projected Cume

FROST/NIXON
381 screens
$494,000 Friday
$17.22M 3-Day
$21M Projected Cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

But, in the world of gambling, you always want to look for value. What are the films and performances with longer odds that would be worth a wager on Sunday? My purpose here is to establish a betting line for each of the six major categories, and then find the value bet in each category.

Question: Who will win Best Picture? Answer: Still, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

BEST PICTURE
Slumdog Millionaire – 1/7
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 6/1
Milk – 20/1
Frost/Nixon – 30/1
The Reader – 50/1

VALUE: I believe that in order to win an Academy Award, passion is required. Slumdog Millionaire has a passionate zeal among its supporters that will make it virtually unbeatable. Although I have made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the second choice here, I give it very little chance of winning. It has major studio backing (Paramount), and it is certainly well-respected, but it is more admired than loved. So, for me the betting value is in Milk. Aside from Slumdog, it is the movie with the largest bloc of zealous fans. Gay and gay-friendly Academy members love the movie, and in the shadow of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, Milk is worth a $2 bet at the window.

Sean Penn's portrayal of Harvey Milk is now a decided underdog to Mickey Rourke

BEST ACTOR
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler – 1/2
Sean Penn, Milk – 3/2
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon – 10/1
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 25/1
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor – 35/1

VALUE: After colorful, rambling, verging on obscene acceptance speeches at both the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards, Mickey Rourke is the true favorite for Best Actor. Rourke has also campaigned hard, paying the paying the price for that Golden Globe win by schmoozing each and every one of those 95 Hollywood Foreign Press members. Penn just doesn’t play that awards campaign game at all, but actors love him. The only real betting value here is Penn, who still has a chance of winning his second Oscar.

It has been 25 years since Mery Streep won an Oscar

BEST ACTRESS
Kate Winslet, The Reader – 1/2
Meryl Streep, Doubt – 5/2
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married – 4/1
Angelina Jolie, Changeling – 25/1
Melissa Leo, Frozen River – 35/1

VALUE: It is Kate Winslet’s year. Just ask anybody. She has two outstanding awards-caliber performances in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. If rules would have allowed, she might have been nominated twice in the Best Actress category. She’s 0-fer-5 lifetime at the Academy Awards and deserves to win, but she can be beaten. Jolie and Leo have no shot. Hathaway is the 3rd choice in the field, and a win is not inconceivable, but Streep is the value bet. The undisputed greatest living actress has not won an Oscar in 25 years, despite the fact that this is her eleventh nomination since winning for Sophie’s Choice in 1983.

Ledger is a lock

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Heather Ledger, The Dark Knight – 1/100
Josh Brolin, Milk – 20/1
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder – 25/1
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt – 30/1
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road – 50/1

VALUE: None. There is no value in this category. Heath Ledger will win Best Supporting Actor posthumously. If you are unfamiliar with how odds work, 1/100 means that you would have to bet $100 to win just $1, and even then, it would be tough to get anybody to take your wager.

Marisa Tomei's "stripper with a heart of gold" in THE WRESTLER may earn her a second Oscar

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona – 1/2
Viola Davis, Doubt – 3/1
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler – 5/1
Amy Adams, Doubt – 12/1
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 15/1

VALUE: This is, by far, the most competitive of the major awards. The longest shot in the field, Taraji P. Henson from Ben Button, is only a 15-1 longshot. Woody Allen has a knack for helping actresses win in this category (ask Dianne Wiest , who scored for both Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway). That points to a win for Penelope Cruz, who was raw and sexy as Maria Elena in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Davis can certainly win for her fleeting-but-powerful turn in Doubt, but my value bet is Marisa Tomei. Her first win, for My Cousin Vinny, was viewed by many as a fluke. In fact, there is an urban legend that she really didn’t win. The story goes that Jack Palance, who presented that year, read the wrong name (the legend claims that Vanessa Redgrave was the actual winner for Howard’s End). In reality, there is no doubt that Tomei is an Oscar winning actress, who gives her career-best performance in The Wrestler.

The uncompromising David Fincher

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire – 1/7
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 6/1
Gus Van Sant, Milk – 20/1
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon – 25/1
Stephen Daldry, The Reader – 35/1

VALUE: Nobody is going to beat Danny Boyle, but if I was looking for a strong value bet, I would wager on Fincher. He is a visionary with some amazing movies on his resume, including Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. He has worked with countless actors and industry types, and his uncompromising nature makes him tough to like, but easy to respect. If there were an upset in this category, Fincher is the only guy who could pull it off.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

Recently, a new ingredient’s been added to the effort of fooling us into believing that what we’re watching is intelligent, and that’s The Immoral – with the normalization of sex with young children leading the charge.  ”Notes on a Scandal,” “Birth” and “Towelhead” [links to my review] actually portray a physical intimacy with children as liberating, while “The Woodsman,” “Little Children,” and “L.I.E.” offer up those who molest our children as alternately sympathetic, wise and the protector. [some spoilers coming]

“The Reader” is so desperate to be perceived as intelligent that it creates an entirely new recipe: the sympathetic Nazi child molester and former S.S. concentration camp guard responsible for the mass murder of 300 Jews who with the help of the young boy she once raped triumphs over her reading disability.

The reason you keep thinking Hollywood’s finally hit bottom is because you forget how well they dig.

Set in post-WWII Germany, “The Reader” wastes no time in getting to “it.” Within twenty-minutes, thirty-six year old Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) has seduced fifteen year-old Michael, played by eighteen year-old David Kross, into her bed. Their steamy sexual affair, broken up only by his reading novels to her, will last the summer of 1958 and affect Michael in ways he can’t imagine for the rest of his life.

She’s a quiet and moody ticket puncher on the local trolley car and he’s a bright, ambitious student from a well to do family. Even without the age difference, this would be a difficult relationship to sustain and soon she moves on, leaving him devastated. When he sees her again nearly ten years later he’s a law student and she’s on trial for war crimes. But she’s also his first love and even later in his life as an adult with a career and grown daughter, Michael (played by Ralph Fiennes) can’t cut his emotional ties to her completely.

With a mix of the Holocaust, a reading disability, artistically lit full frontal nudity, illicit romance, a European setting and a little courtroom drama, the Academy just couldn’t help themselves from nominating this for a Best Picture Oscar, which only serves to further prove that The Oscar Contender has become a genre all its own, because “The Reader” simply isn’t a very good film.

Thanks largely to David Kross’ sympathetic performance as young Michael, the first hour is the most compelling. Michael’s truly in love with Hanna, and you feel for him because you’re watching a film produced by a Weinstein Company in desperate need of Oscar-cred, so you know the poor kid’s in for some real heartbreak. And throughout the story the only effective moments will come when the perspective is on Michael. Watching him affected by what’s become of his first love creates the film’s few tender moments.

Unfortunately, most of the narrative involves Hanna and so we find ourselves stuck with a protagonist who seduces a child (perversely, her nickname for him is “Kid”), breaks his heart, and then confesses to mass murder. Which might be okay if “The Reader” was a tale of redemption, but it’s not, it’s the tale of a monster of a human being triumphing over illiteracy. Morality aside, the absurdity of this approach doesn’t allow you to lose yourself in the story. Again and again, the absurdity breaks the spell.

The Academy seems determined to give Winslet a Best Actress Oscar this year and they do deserve credit for not nominating her for a truly awful performance in “Revolutionary Road,” and she is quite good as Hanna, though her old age make up is distracting and you do catch her acting more than once. At times all that nudity feels calculated, as in: “See what a brave actress female actor I am, Academy?”

There are other story flaws, as well. A subplot involving Michael and his estranged daughter never makes sense or fits well into the overall narrative, and when the film ends on a final grace note involving this under-developed relationship, you can only shake your head at the choice as the credits roll. But this is the least of the film’s choices that has you scratching your head as the credits roll.

Give the filmmakers credit. Except for the use of intelligence and thoughtfulness, everything that could be done to make ”The Reader” appear as though it were intelligent and thoughtful was.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

BEST PICTURE: Slumdog Millionaire
Presented by Mick Jagger, so good in 1992’s Freejack, also starring Emilio Estevez, Renee Russo and Anthony Hopkins, the Rolling Stones front man was chosen to lead the coronation. (I’m being facetious. Freejack was awful. Jagger just seems like an odd choice.)

BAFTA Winner Danny Boyle flanked by Patrick Stewart (left) and Ian McKellan

BEST ACTOR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Chalk one up for Rourke. I think that the tide is turning in the Oscar race. Mickey dropped an F-bomb in his acceptance speech, and although censors will need every one of those 7 seconds of delay, I am now leaning to Rourke’s heroic turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson to win Best Actor at February 22’s Academy Awards. A choice moment from Mickey’s speech, “Thanks to Marsei Tomei for constantly taking her clothes off on-screen…I enjoyed looking at her.” Here’s a link to Mickey’s acceptance speech with all the necessary bleeps.

Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet show off their hardware

BEST ACTRESS: Kate Winslet, The Reader
She was nominated for both Revolutionary Road an The Reader, but just as Oscar voters did, the BAFTA Awards voters preferred the slow burning guilt and shame of her performance in The Reader over her showy Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style theatrics in Rev Road.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
The year’s most memorable performance, and since TDK was snubbed for Best Picture at both the BAFTA Awards and the upcoming Oscars, this is the best way to pay tribute to the all-time second-biggest grossing movie in US history.

Cruz didn't have to contend with Winslet, with both of her nominations in the Best Actress category or Viola Davis (Doubt), a strong contender at the Oscars

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Very well-deserved. She had a tremendous year with both the edgy, verge of crazy Maria Elena from Woody Allen’s comedy and a haunting performance in the very underrated Elegy. With Winslet out of the Supporting Actress race at both the BAFTA Awards and the Oscars, Cruz gets her shot. Keep in mind that Viola Davis, so good in Doubt was not nominated here, but is a live bet in two weeks at the Academy Awards.

BEST DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
The obvious choice. Manchester-born. The career of a true auteur with brilliantly diverse films like Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions and 28 Days Later on his resume.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
After writing The Fully Monty in 1998, this UK-born screenwriter seemingly disappeared until 2008 when he wrote both Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Slumdog. No surprise at all that he wins here, and he seems like a lock on Oscar night with David Hare’s The Reader as a distant challenger.

Original Screenplay winner Martin McDonagh with his In Bruges star Colin Farrell

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Martin McDonagh, In Bruges
Known for his plays The Pillowman and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, he actually won the Oscar for Best Short Live Action Film in 2006 with something called Six Shooter. London-born this is his first full-length feature film and he is both a BAFTA winner and an Academy Award nominee. McDonagh is unlikely to repeat on Oscar night with Dustin Lance Black, already the WGA winner, a strong favorite for Milk.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
A Boyle favorite who previously worked with him on 28 Days Later, Mantle was also DP on 2006’s fantastic The Last King of Scotland. He could be carried to an Oscar win riding the crest of a Slumdog tidal wave, or Wally Pfister could snag the award for his work on The Dark Knight (there could be a reverse backlash at the Academy Awards with voters rallying around TDK because of the Best Picture snub). The tag-team of two-time Oscar winner Chris Menges and eight-time nominee Roger Deakins are also a threat for their work on The Reader.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Probably the right choice here. It’s a 160-minute movie covering decades so getting the look right must have been a daunting task.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Again this is right on. In fact, you could argue that the whole movie is predicated on the visual effects. Seamlessly placing Brad Pitt’s face on another body without the strings showing? If the FX people don’t pull this off, Fincher has no movie.

BEST SOUND: Slumdog Millionaire
On Oscar night, this category will either belong to Slumdog in a sweep or The Dark Knight.

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIR: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The obvious choice for the BAFTA Awards and the Oscars.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Michael O’Connor, The Duchess
Big gigantic dresses. That’s what I saw when I watched The Duchess. Generally speaking, that’s what wins in this category.

Composer A.R. Rahman wins the BAFTA and may become the first Indian to win an Academy Award

BEST MUSIC: A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
In my mind, this is the right choice. There has never been a mainstream film score that sounds remotely like what Rahman produced for Slumdog. The score is integral to the feel of the movie. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that it would be the same movie with a conventional score. Rahman is only the third Indian ever nominated for an Oscar, and this soundtrack does represent a fascinating bridge between traditional and modern Indian music and the Western sound we all know.

BEST ANIMATED FILM: WALL-E
Yes, Waltz With Bashir is unique – an animated, foreign language documentary, but WALL-E is a special, special movie, and Andrew Stanton deserves every award that comes along. The Chaplinesque quality of the first act makes it, for my money, one of the best animated movies of the modern era.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: I’ve Loved You So Long
This was easily my favorite foreign language film of 2008. The arcane rules governing Best Foreign Language Film excluse this Phillipe Claudel drama from Oscar contention, but put this in your Netflix cue when it becomes available. Kristen Scott Thomas delivers a haunting portrait of a woman with a secret, and, as it unravels in the hands of her empathetic sister (played by the remarkable Elsa Zylberstein), her burden and suffering are heartbreaking.

BEST BRITISH FILM: Man on Wire
Slumdog was nominated here, but the BAFTA tradition is to recognize a smaller film, excluded from the Best Picture race. I am one of the few people that didn’t fall in love with this James Marsh doc about wire-walker Phillippe Petit. Since the Brits have no Best Documentary Feature category, this was their one chance to recognize Marsh. Man On Wire is the prohibitive Oscar favorite for Best Doc, and I may have to watch it again just to see if I missed something the first time around.

Noel Clarke, the surprise winner of the BAFTA Rising Star Award

ORANGE RISING STAR: Noel Clarke
This award is voted on by the British public, and Clarke is the star of the UK TV hit Doctor Who. Both Michael Cera (Juno, Superbad) and Rebecca Miller (Frost/Nixon, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) lost the fan vote but are likely to have longer and more notable careers than Clarke.

CARL FOREMAN AWARD: Steve McQueen, The Hunger
Tells the story of the last six weeks in the life of hunger striker Bobby Sands. Michael Fassbender, who also lost out on the Orange Rising Star Award to Clarke, portrays Sands, and the movie played for just one week in the US (I’m assuming for Oscar qualification). Hopefully IFC will give this some arthouse runs this year.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

Only one of this year’s Best Picture nominees has inspired any real passion from the broad public. The almost-certain Best Picture winner is Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight), and its devotees, including critics and members of the Academy (not to mention yours truly), have made it a word-of-mouth smash hit. The Danny Boyle-directed feel-good Bollywood fusion movie made for a meager $14M added another $2.05M or so on Friday and is charting a 3-day course for about $7.4M. That will give the Slumdog a $77.4M take, and it could reach $90M-$95M before it’s through in American theatres.

David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin is the only 2009 Best Picture nominee to top $100M

The other four Best Picture noms are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount), Milk (Focus), The Reader (Weinstein) and Frost/Nixon (Universal). I approached  Benjamin Button as a little kid might approach broccoli. (You’re not allowed to leave the table until you eat it, and it’s supposed to be good for you.) It’s very long, a bit pretentious, and not nearly as good as other David Fincher-directed films like Se7en and Zodiac. After opening strong, the movie is now fading despite 13 Oscar nominations, selling about $640,000 in tickets Friday for a likely $2.24M 3-day. The cume will be a respectable $120M by Monday, but how many people have you actually heard saying, “I love Benjamin Button!”

The Reader, Milk and Frost/Nixon are now on as many screens as they will ever be, and they are certainly not setting the world on fire. Here’s how the five movies nominated for Hollywood’s biggest prize are performing this weekend.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE OF BEST PICTURE NOMINEES FEBRUARY 6-8
Slumdog Millionaire – $2.05M Friday – $7.4M 3-day – $77.4M cume
Benjamin Button – $640K Friday – $2.4M 3-day – $120M cume
The Reader – $605K Friday – $2.3M 3-day – $16M cume
Milk – $285K Friday – $1.1M 3-day – $25.2M cume
Frost/Nixon – $189K Friday – $753K 3-day – $15.6M cume

Aside from Slumdog Millionaire, there’s not much box office upside here. Ben Button is unlikely to reach $130M, while Milk will probably fall short of $30M. The Reader could add a possible $8M before its done, and Frost/Nixon won’t even get to $20M domestic.

Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in Frost/Nixon, unlikely to top $20M domestic

PROJECTED CUMES OF 2009 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
Benjamin Button – $127M cume (projected)
Slumdog Millionaire – $95M cume (projected)
Milk – $29M cume (projected)
The Reader – $23M cume (projected)
Frost/Nixon – $19M cume (projected)
Combined projected cume: $293M

If those numbers hold, the 2009 awards season will have given us three of the six weakest performing Best Picture nominees of the last decade.

TOP 10 LOWEST GROSSING BEST PICTURE NOMINEES OF THE LAST DECADE
1. 2006 – Letters From Iwo Jima – $13.75M cume
2. 2009 – Frost/Nixon – $20M cume (projected)
3. 2009 – The Reader – $25M cume (projected)
4. 2005 – Capote – $28.75M
5. 1999 – The Insider – $29M
6. 2009 – Milk – $30M cume (projected)
7. 2005 – Good Night & Good Luck – $31.5M cume
8. 2002 – The Pianist – $32.5M cume
9. 2006 – Babel – $34.3M cume
10. 2008 – There Will Be Blood – $40.2M cume

Now just two weeks away, the 2009 Oscar ceremony could be a Waterloo of sorts for the Motion Picture Academy. First-time Oscar producers Bill Condon and Lawrence Mark have promised something daring. A re-imagining of the Academy Awards telecast, coming off last year’s all-time lowest ratings.

Hugh Jackman, the talented Australian actor, will serve as host. He previously won an Emmy for his hosting of the Tony Awards a few years back (Here’s his opening musical number from the broadcast.) Yes he can sing and dance, but can he overcome the lack of appeal of the movies that the Academy has chosen to honor?

As a hardcore movie fan, I will be watching, but the average American doesn’t care about enough of these movies to draw a substantial audience. This group of Best Picture nominees seems destined to be the second-least popular group of nominees in the past fifteen years with an ultimate combined cume of just $293M.

Thandie Newton and Matt Dillon in Best Picture winner Crash, which grossed $54.5M domestic

WEAKEST TOTAL GROSS FOR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
- last 15 years -
1. 2005 – $245M
Crash, Brokeback, Capote, Good Night & Good Luck, Munich
2. 2009 – $293M (projected)
Slumdog, Ben Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader
3. 2006 – $296M
Departed, Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen
4. 1996 – $306M
English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies, Shine
5. 2007 – $357M
No Country, Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood
6. 1993 – $368M
Schindler’s List, Fugitive, Name of the Father, The Piano, Remains of the Day
7. 1995 – $378M
Braveheart, Apollo 13, Babe, Il Postino, Sense & Sensibility
8. 2004 – $401M
Million Dollar Baby, Aviator, Finding Neverland, Ray, Sideways
9. 1998 – $440M
Shakespeare in Love, Saving Private Ryan, Life is Beautiful, Elizabeth, Thin Red Line
10. 1994 – $543M
Forrest Gump, Four Weddings & a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, Shawshanke Redemption

I would love to be wrong. I’d love to believe that keeping the identities of presenters a secret, and a song-and-dance man from Down Under, and the sight of Brad and Angelina on the red carpet, and a gutsy, little independent movie from Mumbai, and a guarantee from producers that the show won’t exceed three hours, and the dramatic posthumous recognition for Heath Ledger – that it will all work to draw a huge television audience. But I am feeling more certain that ABC’s Oscars telecast this year may go down as the lowest rated ever.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.