I’m deeply proud of the fact that Yankee Fog was one of the first websites to break the news of the upcoming cinematic juggernaut that is Snakes on a Plane. I am equally proud to introduce my readers to a film that seems even more likely to leave audiences gasping in stunned disbelief: Dangerous Men.
The film apparently surfaced in a handful of LA theaters last fall, with no advertising. But word of mouth soon spread among the city’s cineasts. To understand why, you might start with the LA Weekly’s review:

I’ve just watched the Oscars.
I know I’m a little late. Here in the UK, they were broadcast only on Sky Movies, which we don’t get. I had to wait until the recording my in-laws were kind enough to make for me made it across the Atlantic. Until then, I haven’t read any coverage of the broadcast, in order to avoid spoilers. (Yes, I am that big an Oscar geek.)
In short, I recognize that by now, everybody else on the planet with any interest in the topic has already commented on Crash‘s surprise win for Best Picture. Everybody has offered a theory as to why it beat out Brokeback Mountain. But I have my own theory, and it’s one that nobody else seems to have considered.
As far as I’m concerned, the reason for Crash‘s win wasn’t that it was “a hometown favorite” (as the New York Times speculated), or that its setting was urban rather than rural (as Larry McMurtry speculated.)
No, Crash won because the Academy members saw it on DVD.
Now, I loved both movies, but I loved them for very different reasons. Brokeback Mountain‘s power comes from a lot of small character moments, many of which are expressed through body language and facial expressions. Crash’s power comes much more from plot.
As a result, if you see them both in the theatre , you’ll pick up on the strengths of Brokeback, but larger-than-life Crash might seem melodramatic or over-the-top. By contrast, if you see them both on DVD, you’ll see the strengths of CRASH, but understated BROKEBACK might seem slow or uninteresting. Most critics and (thus far) most moviegoers will have seen both films on a big screen– but I’m willing to bet that many, if not most, Academy members saw both films on screener DVDs.
 

Oscarwatch reports that, after some hemming and hawing, Universal is mailing out DVD screeners of Munich to BAFTA voters, but that they’ll arrive too late for the voting deadline, which was noon today.
I made a point of making it to one of the screenings of the movie here in London, but it wasn’t especially well-attended. If it was typical, then Munich won’t be getting the consideration it deserves in the BAFTAs, which would be a pity.

I’ve been enjoying Carpetbagger’s take on Awards season. Obviously, a New York Times film critic doesn’t need me to direct traffic to his site, but people might well miss a gem that was tucked away in the comments to one of his entries–a brief but funny behind-the-scenes look at the Academy Awards ceremony from Oscar-nominated screenwriter Julian Barry.

I went to a screening of the excellent and thoughtful Syriana last night, followed by a Q&A with writer/director Stephen Gaghan, and I’m pleased to report that Mr. Gaghan–who also wrote Traffic–speaks the way he writes screenplays. That is, when asked a simple question, he launches into a lengthy and intelligent narrative that cuts back and forth between several seemingly unrelated anecdotes before finally bringing them together in an ending that makes you feel better informed, even if it raises as many questions as it actually answers. At most of the Q&A’s I’ve attended, the subject ends up answering five or six questions from the moderator, and roughly as many from the audience. Last night, given the same amount of time, Gaghan only got through two questions from the moderator and three from the audience, and he still managed to run over.
Oh, and by the way, to the British lady who turned to her husband on the way out of the screening and said, “Of course, the Americans won’t understand that movie,” I would just like to say: You’re absolutely right. The country that gave you The Sopranos, West Wing, The Simpsons, and, oh yes, THE FREAKING MOVIE YOU JUST WATCHED can’t possibly provide the same sort of sophisticated mass audience that makes The Sun your country’s most-read newspaper, but we do our best to muddle through somehow.

The Golden Globe nominations have been announced. I don’t have too much to add to Alligators in a Helicopter’s thoughtful and thorough post on the subject, but I did want to highlight two disagreements with him.
He writes:

Given the mediocre reviews that “Mrs. Henderson Presents” is getting, and looking at the list of the 9 female Best Actress nominees other than Judi Dench, it seems like Reese Witherspoon might be getting an Oscar in about three months.

I’ve received my BAFTA voting pack, and I note two interesting changes this year.
First is the increased power of voters in specific “chapters” of BAFTA. In the first round of voting, BAFTA members winnow down the hundreds of possible nominees in every category down to a more manageable 12. At this stage, everybody can vote in all categories–set decorators can vote for Best Editing, editors can vote for Best Screenplay, screenwriters can vote for Best Sound, and so on. However, the Academy is now giving a little extra weight to votes cast by members within their area of expertise. For example, as a member of the Direction Chapter, I received a letter informing me that:

J Tantalus recently posted a comment about his experiences with the Cinea DVD player to a previous entry. I thought he had some interesting things to say, and since most people won’t find his comment, hidden as it is in a year-old entry, I thought I’d highlight it hear:

Every BAFTA member I know has had to have either a replacement Cinea DVD machine or a software update or, usually both!
One BAFTA member sent an email to Cinea saying he had a problem with his machine and he accidentally hit “send to all”. I replied to him to tell him that his email might not have gone to Cinea and that he was not alone in his misery. He said he had an inbox full of emails from other BAFTA members also saying that their machines were so much junk.
One common problem has been that the image, although filling the screen was off-centre. This was either on the PAL setting alone or in both PAL and NTSC. This has necessitated a software update delivered on CD. We were first promised this in “a few weeks” a year ago. They have just arrived.
Other miscellaneous faults include dead displays and random crackles when playing CDs. I’m not sure where the “high end” idea comes from. If it wasn’t for the watermarks (don’t you just love being treated like a crook?) we’d have been better off buying a £30 player from Tesco.
After all this it looks like Disney might be the only reason that we have to give this thing house room. Nobody else can be bothered to watermark their screeners.
Po-faced as ever, Cinea have also made the players single region – even though people in the film industry have perfectly legitimate business reasons for viewing DVDs from other regions. Indeed, Warner Brothers have already sent 2 Region 1 discs this year to BAFTA members which can’t be played on the Cinea machines!
On the whole, I regret the passing of the VHS screeners. You could watch them on anything and once watched, they provided a useful source of blank tapes.

If you move your eyes a degree or two to the right, you’ll notice a new feature: a complete tally of all the DVDs I’ve received, the Q&As I’ve witnessed, and the screenings I’ve attended since the For Your Consideration season started in October. I’ve also listed the films I hope to see before 4 January, when the first round of BAFTA voting ends. I’ll try to update the tally regularly as I attended more screenings.
If there’s a film that came out in 2005 that you think deserves consideration in any category, and I’ve left it off my list, let me know, and I’ll try to see it.
One thing that helped me put this list together is that I’m pretty careful about keeping track of which movies I’ve seen; after I’ve seen a movie, I make a point of entering it into my list, and jotting down a few notes about my impression. Looking over the list as a whole, I notice that I’ve seen roughly 85 movies thus far in 2005 (including DVDs). This is far above the national average, but doesn’t seem like all that much to me. I blame all the traveling I’ve done this year. Clearly, I am spending too much time seeing the real world, and not enough time in somebody else’s fantasy. I will have to do something about that next year.

I just received the following e-mail:

Twentieth Century Fox Invites BAFTA Members To A Special Screening
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
…
Sunday 27 November
1.30 for a 2.00pm start
followed by a Q&A with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine
Children welcome

DON’T LET YOUR CHILDREN GO! IT’S A TRAP!