No alarms and no surprises please

This is my final fit, my final bellyache.

Well, that was a bit of a yawner. I am pleased by Ian McShane's win, if only because it must have delighted avid commenter Britopia to be proven wrong in his pessimism.

After last night's broadcast, the cinetrix has one award category to add, and that's Most Self-Aware of One's Place in the Universe. The male award goes to Jamie Foxx, whose acceptance speech had the tough crowd I watched with move from laughter ["two drinks away from messing it up"] to tears. The female award belongs to Teri Hatcher, who clearly recognizes a second act when she sees it. And Mick Jagger gets the superstar award, inhabiting a place in the empyrean far above the mere mortal movie stars in the audience.

Today is our last day of the Conversation, for now. I've had a blast. I want to thank Liz, Aaron, Filmbrain, and David for being game when I suggested we do this, and for bringing my game up every day. Thanks, too, to all those who joined the Conversation via the comments. We'll keep them open for a few days more before we consign this rag to yesterday's news.

Because it is our last day, and there were very few "we wuz robbed" moments in last night's, in Variety-speak, "kudocast," we thought we'd end with a shot of pure movie love. This idea is stolen liberated from Stephanie Zacharek writing in Slate's Movie Club:

Film Comment used to do a year-end feature I wish they'd bring back, in which there were pages of elegant one-sentence descriptions of moments from the past year's movies that had delighted or moved or startled the writers. It was a way of reminding us all that sometimes it's the individual moments that matter to us more than the movies they are in. And it was a reminder that our job, not just as critics but as moviegoers, is to stay alert to those moments. Maybe you four have some of those moments from this past year you'd like to share?

I may add more later on today as my memory is jogged, but this moment stood out in a movie made up of so many searing ones. It was my hands-down favorite film in 2004, number one in my nonexistent top 10, a film, oddly enough, of intense conversations: Before Sunset.

In the back of a black Parisian taxi, an outstretched hand is withdrawn, unseen.

I would have loved this film anyway, but I do think reactions to it are very much colored by where the individual viewer was in his or her own life and where and with whom one watched. In the comments over at Filmbrain's Eleven Is the New Ten, Sarmoung, talking about Eternal Sunshine said it best:

I know films like this are for me very dependent on mood. You're in a cinema and it was very much a couple's sort of film over here. You've come to see it with two couples. You've been drinking gin and tonics beforehand. The whole experience was rather maudlin. Like those French films I'd pore over as a child late at night. Upon which I blame everything! Well, English sarcasm aside, I suspect I might have liked it if it hadn't made me so sad. Could have been the gin though...

Feel free to gloss your movie moment with a little context. Hell, match Sideways with your favorite vintage. As the 'Fesser is so fond of observing, "Conditions are always a factor."

And thanks again to everyone. I had a lovely time.

Comments

[blooperreel]

This list goes to eleven:

1) The next to last shot (if memory serves) in "Gozu" of three toothbrushes nestled together. This tender image is a small revelation and casts the entire film in a different light. Miraculous and probably just a lark on Miike's part.

2) The way Uma looks at David Carradine from across a campfire in "Kill Bill 2." They convinced me that they were in love.

3) The haunting apple truck sequence in "Dogville."

4) The opening sequence of "Enduring Love." Probably the most hallucinatory scene in any movie this year.

5) The extradordinary opening 10 minutes of "Dawn of the Dead."

6) Dubya saying "Won't get fooled again" in the punchline to Michael Moore's "F911."

7) New Yorkers on a subway standing between Peter Parker and Doc Ock in "Spiderman 2." Genuinely moving popcorn optimism.

8) The moment when I realized Isabella Rosselini's beer-filled prosthetic glass legs represented the Twin Towers shattering in "Saddest Music in the World." Audacious and subservive and touching.

9) The moment where a young woman with cerebral palsy breaks free from her affliction in the first shift into magical realism in "Oasis." Very few scenes actually take my breath away. This was one.

10) The final fade to black in "Before Sunset."

11) Don Cheadle's heartbreaking attempts to tie a necktie in "Hotel Rwanda." I'm not a fan of this movie, but Cheadle's bit of physical acting here is extraordinary.

[Britopia]

I hate to correct the Cinetrix, but I believe I expressed neither optimism nor pessimism about Ian McShane's chances. In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion he might win.

That said, I was disappointed that he didn't take the opportunity to refer to the sponsors as "those Hollywood Foreign Press cocksuckers." Guess you can't have everything.

Two moments: one from a movie I saw this afternoon, one from a movie that's keeping me busy at the keyboard:

-- Cate, as Kate, in The Aviator, overheard as a scene drifts away: "Jane Eyre has been selling popcorn for a hundred years." That will come in handy.

-- Peter Wight, as D.I. Webster, in the most subtle and powerful supporting performance of 2004: "Let's say about twenty years." This choice of words, during the interrogation of Vera Drake, beautifully captures the way that his character uncomfortably negotiates the private and the public, in a film that's all about the collision between the private and the public.

"Years," in both cases. Not sure what to make of that.

[lizpenn]

blooperreel and i share a lot of tastes! i had already starting writing about the Cheadle necktie when i read his (her)list.and it's true, the beginning of Enduring Love -- the whole hot-air balloon sequence, the first 15 minutes or so -- had a mood that was unforgettable. it's too bad the movie went so rapidly and steeply downhill after that. by the end, it was essentially a gay British version of Fatal Attraction.

[Filmbrain]

Blooperreel -- for nos. 1 and 9 you deserve to be knighted. Thanks for reminding me of those.