Flickgrrl

That's Denzel Washington, as druglord Frank Lucas in American Gangster squaring off with Russell Crowe, as Richie Roberts, the dogged cop who brought down Superfly.
What was going on in the minds of these electrifying actors as they filmed this scene? Was Washington thinking, "Dude, is that a squirrel on your head?" Was Crowe thinking, "I can't believe this guy's performance in Training Day beat mine in A Beautiful Mind." In the acting ring, does The Hurricane blow away Cinderella Man?
These pros have a lot of history, going back to when Washington was the cop and Crowe the cyborg/killer in Virtuosity (1996) up through competing against each other twice for best actor honors. Come Oscar time, it's likely they'll be up against each other again -- Washington for his streaming-torpedo performance in Gangster and Crowe for his charismatic gunslinger in 3:10 to Yuma.
Were Washington honored again (it would be his third win), I'll have mixed feelings. He's superlative in Gangster (as is Crowe in Yuma and Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah). But it would mean that his lead-actor statuettes would be for his unrepentant cop in Training Day and his unrepentant druglord in Gangster rather than the redemptive figures of Malcolm X and the Hurricane.
Your thoughts? And if you don't want to wade in that stream, supply a caption to the picture above.

Here's a hankie. Now read this Desson Thompson essay on why we weep at movies and which films are the guaranteed tearjerkers. Pictured above are Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, my co-workers' nomination for most reliable crymaker. (Heck, I begin sniffling when I hear the opening credits, but I'm a cheap weep.)

In my experience, sports films involving terminal illness or death (Brian's Song, Bang the Drum Slowly, Pride of the Yankees) work on the male tear duct quicker than a Vidalia onion.

Me? Having lately nursed a parent through Alzheimer's, I am particularly vulnerable to dementia films such as Hanging Up , Iris and Away from Her, the storyline of the last eerily similar to the development faced by former Justice Sandra Day O' Connor.

Since the introduction of video, I have prescribed cinematic "cry therapy" for myself and my friends. And even though the scientists Thompson interviews pooh-pooh the efficacy of such self-medication, after I bawl I often feel like the psychic storm has passed.

In my professional life, the movies that have produced the most significant waterfalls were Shadowlands, about the star-crossed love between C.S. Lewis and poet Joy Gresham, and Antwone Fisher, likewise a real-life story about a young man coming to terms with the mother who abandoned him. (On both occasions I wept projectile tears at the critics' screenings, spritzing the neck of my colleague in the row ahead.)

I agree with Thompson that Old Yeller is a reliable tear inducer, but the rest of his list leaves me dry-eyed. My moistest weepers: Pride of the Yankees, when Gary Cooper delivers Lou Gehrig's final speech,Dark Victory as Bette Davis loses her eyesight, To Each His Own when Olivia de Havilland's son asks her to dance, The Revolt of Job when the couple are separated from their adoptive son, Oscar & Lucinda during the final mother and child sequence, and -- so help me god -- The Wizard of Oz. I always lose it when Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow." What makes me cry are characters being brave and eloquent in situations where I would be, well, blubbering.

What movie makes you cry? Why?

Each year before the bird gets brined, baked and basted, I pause to give thanks for the movies that celebrate the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, inspired by the end-of-harvest feasts celebrated by Native Americans and European settlers and depicted in Squanto and The New World.

The most affectionate portrait of the nation's diversity and inclusivity is What's Cooking?, Gurinder Chadha's vivid American mosaic of four families -- African-American, Asian, Latino and Jewish -- each putting a distinctive touch on the traditional feast, (Pictured are the film's stars, Alfre Woodard, Julianna Margulies, Mercedes Ruehl, Kyra Sedgwick and Joan Chen.)

I'd have to agree with Roger Ebert that the most depressing Thanksgiving movie of all time is Ang Lee's The Ice Storm , in which an estranged family of four gather around the table looking as though they'd like to carve each other and not the turkey. (Nearly matching its DQ -- Depression Quotient -- is the Thanksgiving dinner in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain in which the whine of an electric knife breaks the tense silence at the table.)

Happy Thanksgiving movies? John Hughes' Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a perennial, as much about the horrors of the travelas the about family reunion and food. Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, like Denzel Washington's Antwone Fisher, are bracketed by Thanksgiving banquets with much sturm and drang before the well-deserved happy endings.

Oliver Stone's The Doors -- in which, if memory serves, rocker Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) throws a turkey at wife Patti (Meg Ryan) -- may be the definitive hippie Thanksgiving film.
Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays, with newly unemployed Holly Hunter, is the definitive Gen X dysfunctional-family Thanksgiving reunion, though some prefer Bart Freundlich's The Myth of Fingerprints. Peter Hedges' Pieces of April , with Katie Holmes as the punkette whose oven is on the fritz, the ultimate alt.Turkey Day experience.

The Norman Rockwell vision of Thanksgiving is summed up in By the Light of the Silvery Moon , a charming 1953 Doris Day/Gordon MacRae musical based on a Booth Tarkington.

Avalon, Driving Miss Daisy, Raising Arizona and Rocky all have key scenes set at Thanksgiving, as does Across the Universe, currently in release.

Of all these films, the one that most evocatively shows Thanksgiving's origins has to be Terrence Malick's The New World, where Pocahontas and her tribe bring their harvrst bounty to the men starving at the Jamestown settlement. And the one that most tastily serves the variety of the Thanksgiving experience would have to be What's Cooking?, with its menu of meals.

Finally, Thanksgiving films are not really about the food but about the narrative convention they provide. As marriage is the event that reconciles conflict in romantic comedies, Thanksgiving is the event that allows characters to simultaneously show their differences, and also their togetherness.

Your thoughts on Thanksgiving films? Most treasured movie? Scene?

Call her CateBob.
On the left is Cate Blanchett, as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, and on the right Dylan himself, elusive subject of Todd Haynes' meditation on the troubadour who led many lives. He is played by no fewer than six actors, among them flinty Blanchett as an enigmatic oracle, edgy Heath Ledger as flawed family man, and the remarkable young Carl Marcus Franklin as the Woody Guthrie-loving American folkie.
Much as I admire their performances, and much as I respect Haynes' attempt to create something deeper than the standard movie biopic, I left the theater scratching my head, thinking, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, "There's no there there." It's an enigmatic movie about an enigma -- not unlike a boring song about boredom.
Thankfully, Haynes successfully avoids replicating the biopic's standard arc of struggle/flameout/phoenix rising from ashes, the cliche of every VH-1: Behind the Music episode.
While structurally ambitious, his six actors in search of one character -- or actors representing different facets of one character -- deny us the elemental pleasures of narrative buildup and catharsis.
The film has its advocates, among them my colleague Steve Rea and The Voice's Jim Hoberman, who observes that Haynes' film " is part of the larger, ongoing Dylan revival brilliantly orchestrated by his manager, Jeff Rosen."
I sympathize with those, including Haynes, who want more from a biopic than the predictable rhythms of fall-and-rise. But my hunch is that audiences will prefer the forthcoming lightweight biopic satire Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story to Haynes' deep-dish ruminations.
Thoughts?