Let's dole out some Teeming Million film awards for 2005.

Cafe Society
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It’s that time of year again - awards show season! For the next few months up until the Academy Awards in March (?), we are subjected to show after show doling out awards for the same humdrum categories - best film, best director, best actor / actress. Let’s be creative and think up some new categories - with our personal choices for nominations of course. My pick for “Cecil” winners are…

Best portrayal of a tortured gay guy dealing with homophobia & repression in midwestern ‘red’ states: Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in “Mysterious Skin.” Honestly, I’m not trying to dis “Brokeback Mountain” (which I liked a lot). It’s just that Leavitt’s character was more twisted, less “Hollywood” and just left a more lasting impression on me than either Ledger or Gyllenhaal.

Most conspicuous career ‘downsizing’: Adrian Brody won a major Academy Award for “the Pianist” as recently as 2003. IMO, he’s the biggest ‘name’ actor in “King Kong”, so how come he’s not even MENTIONED in trailers/ads/promos? Sure, everyone’s going to the flick to see Kong, and Naomi Watts has the benefit of assuming the “Fay Wray” role (one of the most iconic roles in filmdom), but why would Jack Black get far more coverage than Brody? I think the skinny guy better re-think his career management.

Best over-the-top villain: Take R’as Al-Ghul & the Scarecrow, the tripods, Sharon Stone (from “Catwoman”), and even Joe McCarthy & Roy Cohn (from “Good Night & Good Luck”), put ‘em all on a plate with a side-order of homefries and serve them up with a cup o’ coffee, 'cuz Tilda Swinton as the White Queen (in “Narnia”) can eat them all for breakfast!

Best reason to see an obviously BAD movie: I’m betting tons & tons of folks walked out of “House of Wax” after the scene in which Paris Hilton gets disembowled. 'Cuz once Hilton wasn’t being tortured…well than it’s just another run-of-the-mill horror remake, and not as much fun to watch.

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The Just Because You’re Pretty Doesn’t Mean You’re Dumb award: It’s a tie between Kiera Knightley for “Pride & Prejudice” and Scarlett Johanssen for “Match Point”. Despite tabloid evidence to the contrary, not all starlets are idiots.

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Do TV shows count to? If so then I’ll nominate

Best Explosion of Total Hypocrisy by a Born Again Has-Been TV Star- Willie Aames for Celebrity Fit Club 2, when the man who makes his living as BIBLEMAN and by going on the “I once was lost but now I’m found” church circuit turned a hose on and threatened to shoot (neither jokingly) a personal trainer who came to his house to help him work out after Aames missed several workout sessions he had (contractually) promised to do and said it was because he was too busy.

Best Total Meltdown By a Coked Up Diva on Reality TV Series for former supermodel Janice Dickinson’s psychotic ranting meltdown when Omarosa said that she wasn’t a good mother due to her self absorbed and drug abusing ways. Best moment was when Dickinson attempted to escape the house through a window above the kitchen sink, ignoring the fact there was an outside door in the same room. The same show gets Most Surprising Celebrity Tidbit Uncovered on Reality TV- Bronson Pinchot is straight!

Biggest ‘Just Do It and Get On With It Award’ goes to The Apprentice for not just hiring Randal on the fourth episode and then switching to Green Acres reruns in that time slot. The Apprentice also gets the “nastiest most bitter little he-bitch to be encountered outside of a gay club or a Truman Capote documentary” for Clay’s little “cunning scheme” confessionals.

The Most Outstanding Waste of Talent on a Television Series award goes to the show Out of Practice for making Henry Winkler and Stockard Channing stock character middle aged sitcom parents. Yawn.

The Single Funniest Line of the Year (that so few people heard) would have many nominees, but all would come from Arrested Development. My personal vote would be “It was one of my illusions”. The show also gets the Funniest Juvenile Humor that You Laughed Your Butt Off At Anyway award for the Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

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Returning to movies:

Nicest New Boy Butt in a Movie would be Jake Gyllenhaal’s for Jarhead, especially the dancing around in a Santa hat scenes (though Joseph Gordon Levitt’s in Mysterious Skin was also sort of twinkishly cute, but having watched him grow up on Powers that Be, Third Rock and other shows it was sort of “ewwww” seeing him in a very sexually explicit role).

The It Takes Place Over the Course of Several Months and Is Filmed in Real Time award goes to King Kong, a movie that lasted longer than some governments.

The Best Performance by Liam Neeson as a Self-Sacrificing Authority Figure in a Movie About Christians Fighting Evil goes to his appearance as the Baron of Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven (you really didn’t think it was gonna be Narnia did you?), with “Evil” in this case being "as interpreted by the Christian army in the film. The movie also receives The Most Interesting and Charismatic Actor You Haven’t Seen Before and Have No Desire to See Nekkid award for Ghassan Massoud, who portrayed Saladin.

The Scene that I Felt Most Uncomfortable and Wicked for Sort of Finding Sexy Award goes to Harry’s bath sequence in Harry Potter: GoF. Daniel Radcliffe is growing up quite cute and seeing him shirtless was sort of disturbing (especially since an unconfirmed rumor says that Rowling’s next book will center on him and Draco Malfoy and be entitled Harry Potter and the Brokeback Magic Mountain).

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Ah, and The Best New Rap Song Sung By White Guys About a Blockbuster Motion Picture Award goes hands down to Lazy Sunday (The Chronic-WHAT!-les of Narnia) by Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg (here if you somehow haven’t seen it after all the times it’s been on the boards), with “You can call us Aaron Burr for the way we’re droppin’ Hamiltons” from the same song winning The Best Line in a Rap Song Sung By White Guys etc. award.

The OMG I’m Such a Total Geek To Be Bothered Such Things in Movies award for myself goes to when I was watching the first moments of Capote, the scene where the bodies of the Clutter family are discovered, and I was thinking “That house is nothing like the Clutter house. The Clutter house was ultramodern for 1950s rural Kansas and surrounded by Chinese elms, not like that old farmhouse out on the plains”. The other award I give to that movie is the Why Didn’t Anybody Rave About Her? award for Catherine Keener’s performance as Nell Harper Lee, who was outstanding but hopelessly overshadowed by PSH’s (mostly deserved) critical ambush as the title character.

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Interesting. How did you find out? Is there a picture on the net? I’ve always pictured it as a farmhouse exactly like the one in Capote, perhaps due to the earlier movie In Cold Blood. Btw, both movies, ICB and Capote, got the part of discovering the bodies wrong. That is, assuming Capote’s version in his book is the right one. And they changed some of the names in Capote. I wonder why. Nancy Clutter’s boyfriend was named Bobby in Capote’s book, but Danny in Capote. Now I don’t know which one is correct.

Anyway, cute thread. I can’t contribute, but I enjoy reading it. I wish I’d seen Mysterious Skin but I don’t even remember it playing here. I’m sure it did, but I completely missed it.

Keener has been raved about since the movie came out. She just got nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award, so her fellow actors sure remembered her. She’ll probably be nominated for the Academy Award. She hasn’t been forgotten.

I feel sorry for Sandra Bullock. She’ll be playing Lee in the 2nd Capote movie (Infamous) coming out this fall. Imagine being compared to Catherine Keener. Same goes for the poor actor playing Capote, Toby Jones. Hoffman will win the Oscar, and this guy has no chance at not being compared. The movie, directed by Douglas McGrath, who directed Emma and Nicholas Nickleby, is finished, and has a great cast (Daniel Craig, Sigorney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Daniels, Isabella Rossellini, Hope Davis), so I’ll be seeing it, but I feel sorry for it. But hey, maybe they got the Clutter house right!

Speaking of Adrien Brody, Oscar winner or not, if you were asked to star in a Peter Jackson movie, even if you were second banana to an ape, would you turn it down? If only to spend some quality time in one of the most beautiful places on earth, it’d be worth it. I doubt he quibbled over his credits. He’s not that kind of guy.

And I agree with you about Jake’s butt scene in Jarhead. More Santa dancing please!

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There are some pictures of it here (don’t worry, no crime scene stuff). Also, the murder scenes of the original movie of In Cold Bloody were filmed at the house, including (very eerie) some inside footage of the murder being reenacted where it actually took place. The actors said it was quite freaky.

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Well, that just goes to show that my mind isn’t worth a damn, since I just saw In Cold Blood in the theater about 3 weeks ago. A new print was shown at the Music Box in Chicago. However, I just saw Capote for the 2nd time a few days ago, so that house is what stayed in my memory. But I did see ICB when it was first released too, and the Capote-esque farmhouse is always what I thought of if I ever thought of a scene which included the house (not very often, I’ll admit). When I first saw Capote it just looked so right. The real house in those pictures hardly looks like it has a 2nd floor. It looks more like a ranch, but the kids and Mrs. Clutter slept on the 2nd floor. I can see the slant of the roof in the picture of Bonnie’s old bedroom. Oh, and I see that Bobby is the correct name. I wonder why they changed it to Danny in Capote.

Thanks for the web site. I’m almost finished re-reading In Cold Blood and it’s interesting to have photos to go along with what I read. I’ll have to re-read the bit about the house. I must have skimmed that part. My interest in all this started because I grew up within walking distance of the prison, Kansas State Penetentiary, where Smith and Hickock met and were later executed. My Jr. High School was just a couple of blocks away (no, wait, I just looked on Google Earth, and the school is less than a block away, and we lived 1.33 miles away. I love Google Earth!), so it was all a very big deal when I was growing up, but I’ve never gone beyond reading the book and seeing the movies. Those pictures are all new to me.

I’ll bet Bobby and Nancy were such a cute couple. He was so dreamy and she was so pretty.

(/end massive hijack)
…wanders off to seriously worry about my memory…

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Best idea for a sequel for a movie that came out in 2005: Goes to my friend (and non-doper) Jim who, over dinner last night, suggested Patrick Seymour Hoffman take on the Capote role one more time and do a film about the black & white ball he held in the mid-60s. Kathy Bates could co-star as Katherine Graham. Harry Connick Jr. & Scarlett Johanssen could play guests Frank Sinatra & Mia Farrow-Sinatra (the “it” couple of the day and certainly two of the guests), etc., etc. Modern day movie stars would probably work for nothing in order to make cameos as famous 1960s A-listers.

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Best Performance By An Animated Dog (who does all his own stunts)

Gromit.

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Best Black Sounding White Guy

Vince Vaughn in Be Cool

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And, per my suggestion in this thread , call it Black and White and Read All Over.

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The It’s About Time They Did It Right award is a tie between:

Batman Begins. After the two ‘Batman According to Burton’ whimsical fests and the abysmal Schumacher attempts it looked as if the caped crusader was done. Finally someone put the “Dark” in “Dark Knight” and did the story some justice.

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Revenge of the Sith. Took you three tries Lucas but you finally put out a film worthy of the Star Wars name. After the unwatchable episode 1, and the uneven episode 2, we finally got something that somewhat lived up to the hype.