Thanks to filmdom’s
less-than-inspired offerings last year, I truthfully wasn’t looking forward to
the Daynas, the awards named after me, voted on by
me, and traditionally intended to spotlight those slighted by Oscar. But I couldn’t not hold them,
due to the fact that a Dayna now carries such
astonishing clout, plus celebrities really seem to like shiny stuff. So
after spending countless hours arranging for the nominees to attend, I decided
to skimp on the remainder of the details.
Since my apartment looks like a
Barnes & Noble exploded, I moved the ceremony outdoors to the little wino
park around the corner, where the attendees enjoyed “panini”
(ham sandwiches I stomped on with my engineer boots) and “mimosas” (Colt 45 and
Tang). And their now-expected swag bags consisted of a tiny first aid kit, just
in case anyone impaled themselves on the park’s charming glass shards. I
assured the skeptical stars that they were the first to sample this radical new
technology, called the iBleed.
Hell, I made do with their half-assed
efforts; they can live with mine. So here it is: the awards, speeches, and
squabbles that marked the 2nd Annual Daynas.
Best
Director: Terrence Malick, TheNew World
The elegant epic about the very mad
affair between Captain Smith and Pocahontas is one of the most polarizing films
of the year, though Malick should have surprised
exactly no one with his trademark languor, which people find either somnolent
or seductive. Consider me seduced (as well as enlightened, since I finally get Christian Bale), but
consider me impatient, too: I don’t want to wait another handful of years for
the next Malick experience.
Best
Actor: Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Daniels’ masterful turn as a selfish
and pompous dad doing the best he can in Noah Baumbach’s
dark comedy about the dissolution of a family should have earned him a
gold-plated Oscar instead of a foil-wrapped Dayna.
Biggest
Scam: High Tension
This French slasher
flick featured the year’s most preposterous twist, a plot point that made
absolutely no sense. Yet, somehow, it actually salvaged the movie.
Director AlexandreAja: “I’m grateful you let me slide on this one. I
promise not to try something so insulting until my next film.”
Most
Precious Film: Me and You and Everyone We
Know
Yet one more Sundance-anointed
annoyance that was supposed to charm me with its eccentricity, but instead
reminded me that life is too short for art without truth.
Most
Vicious Supporting Actress: Gong Li, Memoirs
of a Geisha
As the eye-popping Hatsumomo, Gong chews enough scenery and twirls enough moustache to make us forget her shaky command of English.
It’s not her fault, though; Geisha should have been made in a foreign language anyway. But I haven’t decided which
one.
Underratedest Film: The
40-Year-Old Virgin
This adorable raunchfest
revived a genre (along with Wedding
Crashers), earned a pile of money and much critical acclaim, but got almost
zero year-end respect. Is that because it’s about S-E-X? That’s awfully
L-A-M-E.
Best
Actress: Claire Danes, Shopgirl
The most lovely and effortless
performance of 2005 came from one of my least favorite actresses: Danes
conjures both heartbreak and hope as a young woman who learns her lessons the
hard way.
Danes: “Sure do appreciate the
backhanded compliment, Dayna. Who are you wearing
tonight; Salvation Armani?”
Best
Penguin-Free Documentary: Stolen
My favorite entry in the 2005 High
Falls Film Festival was this riveting look at a $300 million art heist from a Boston
museum and the increasingly surreal investigation that followed, leading to
both the Irish Republican Army and the US Senate.
Most
Surprising Supporting Actor: Tom Arnold, Happy
Endings
Casting professional punchlineArnold
as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s love interest was arguably the
riskiest casting of the year, and it paid off in spades. He was the high
point in a frustrating shambles of a film.
The
Jude Law Award for Overexposure: Keira Knightley
Renamed this year in honor of last
year’s recipient, this award goes to the person I most wish would take an
extended vacation, and Knightley wins hands down: The Jacket, Domino, Pride & Prejudice,
as well as every magazine cover except High
Times. Terrence Howard (Hustle &
Flow, Crash, Get Rich or Die Tryin’) might have won this
if he weren’t so damn green-eyed — I mean gifted.
The You-Don’t-Call-or-Write Award: Ryan Gosling
Gosling does it right: Makes a couple
of good films, goes away, then makes a couple more.
But his only 2005 appearance was in the widely ignored Stay, so I am looking forward to the upcoming Half Nelson. Gosling was also awarded the
Please-Rescue-Me-From-This-Soul-Sucking-Drudgery Award, which used to go to Benicio del Toro (curiously AWOL as well, save Sin City), who is now playing Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s
upcoming Guerrilla… which also
features Gosling.
The
Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out Award: Cameron Crowe
The “mimosas” made me sort of mouthy
by this point, and I allegedly rushed the podium with this outburst: “Hey,
Crowe! Are you so smitten with your own words that you’ve forgotten that they
need to be delivered in a certain order so that they actually make sense? First the incomprehensible Vanilla
Sky, now the embarrassingly contrived Elizabethtown. Why don’t you ‘show me the talent’! Get it? It’s like
‘show me the money,’ but different! Where are you going?”
So I was delighted to finally kiss
2005 goodbye, and while I’m trying to remain optimistic about next year’s Daynas — the films of 2006 look rather promising on paper
— there is still an undercurrent of dread. Jude Law can’t stay away forever.
Brussels sprouts
Documentaries used to be completely
distasteful to me, the Brussels sprouts of the film world. I ingested them
because I knew they were in some way beneficial, even if I couldn’t see how at
the time. It’s possible I’ve grown more mature, but a likelier explanation is
that documentary features have just gotten more accessible.
This year’s Oscar nominees for Best
Documentary are Darwin’s Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest
Guys in the Room, March of the
Penguins, Murderball,
and Street Fight. None of the
nominees are about the Holocaust and none were made by Michael Moore or Errol
Morris. All have showed on Rochester
screens (Street Fight aired on PBS),
and all educate as well as entertain. And no doubt due to its family appeal, Penguins has grossed more at the box
office than any of the five nominees for Best Picture.
Filmmaking has gotten easier, with
inexpensive and user-friendly equipment enabling movies to be made on the most
shoestring of budgets. Documentaries that the chains wouldn’t have booked on a
dare are suddenly enjoyable moneymakers instead of dry and utilitarian screen
fillers. How can we ensure that this continues? Simple.
Keep watching.
— Dayna Papaleo
This year’s Oscar story
The characters in Woody Allen’s Match Point completely annihilate a
number of commandments — including the ones about coveting and killing —
but the religious right doesn’t seem to mind. They’re too agitated over BrokebackMountain, director Ang Lee’s Oscar-nominated Western about two men who embark
on a decades-long affair that both enriches and wrecks their lives. Apparently
murder and adultery is less damaging to Christian values when it involves
heterosexuals.
Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org), a
Washington, DC-based watchdog organization that “sets the record straight on
important issues that have received slanted coverage,” posted a column on
February 23 lauding the efforts of VILE, a group which recently protested Brokeback at the
Little Theatre. AIM echoes VILE’s stance that Brokeback is
pro-homosexual propaganda, though it’s difficult to imagine straight people
watching the agony endured by the main characters and wishing they were gay,
too.
If anything, Brokeback is pro-tolerance
propaganda, and it’s not just our far-right brethren whose minds could use some
opening. Even forward-thinking people I know have made comments like “I don’t
want to watch that,” referring to
what they mistakenly assume to be nonstop cowboy-on-cowboy action. But all you
would see is the heartbreaking tale of two people aching to be together. And
you can probably relate to that.
Well, there’s always home video in
case you’re concerned that the theater employees might question your sexuality.
And don’t worry — there are no documented cases of someone catching gay from
a piece of art.
— DaynaPapaleo
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.
