Flickgrrl

Now that Juno, the love-it-or-hate it emo-flick about a pregnant high-schooler, has passed the $100 million box-office milestone, its lovers and haters are getting louder. (Pictured are Ellen Page as the eponymous Juno and Michael Cera as her baby daddy).
Dave Kehr, usually a sane voice, dismissed it in his recent Oscar analysis: The stealth candidate remains Juno, the phony, feel good comedy about teen pregnancy (as opposed to Knocked Up, the phony, feel good comedy about twentysomething pregnancy), which racked up four key nominations — picture, director, actress, screenplay. This piece of cheese could still take it, as I imagine it’s a film that the worried parents of the Academy would clutch to their hearts far more firmly than Atonement, a film that wears its sense of Oscar entitlement on its sleeve."
I honored it in my review, as did Roger Ebert, who rated it "about the best movie of the year."
Oscar analysts who prefer No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, -- excellent movies both -- worry that they will divide voters and Juno will crash the Best Picture party. Me? I'm guessing that given the Academy's antipathy to comedy, Juno will win a screenplay statuette for Diablo Cody, that No Country will take best picture and Paul Thomas Anderson the director prize.
Your thoughts on Juno, on the Oscar horse race?

Hard to imagine that a movie starring the irrepressible Paul Rudd and the irresistible Michelle Pfeiffer (pictured), a movie written and directed by Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless) won't be coming to your local multiplex but seems headed straight-to-video.
That seems to be the fate in store for I Could Never Be Your Woman. As reported here by Missy Schwartz, the film is a distribution orphan,casualty of a producer who made bad distribution decisions. (Hat tip: Melissa Silverstein).
Aren't there enough fans of Rudd, Pfeiffer and Heckerling (who cast the then-unknown Rudd in Clueless) who would pay to see this on screen? Even if it's sub-par Heckerling, could it be half as bad as Over Her Dead Body, the Rudd vehicle currently stinking up theaters?
Want to start a campaign to get this one released on the big screen? Leave your comments here -- along with your favorite line from Clueless. Mine is Alicia Silverstone's retort when her friends taunt her for being a virgin: "You know how picky I am about my shoes -- and they only go on my feet."

Everybody loves Lady and the Tramp (pictured), on Moviefone's list of the Most Romantic Films of All Time (click link to see the other 24). (I am surprised by the omission of ...When Harry Met Sally.) Funny, 15 of the films on the list end with the lovers sundered by death or love's end. All are beloved titles, although your beloved might get a mixed message if you gave one of the sundered-by-death titles as a Valentine.
Those looking for English-language happy-ending romances might also consider Dodsworth (1936), Ninotchka (1939), Shop Around the Corner (1940), Cabin in the Sky (1943), Adam's Rib (1949) , The Quiet Man (1952) , Funny Face (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Heaven Can Wait (1978) , The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) Say Anything (1989), Love, Actually (2003) and Hitch (2005).
Your thoughts on the list? Your romance-movie shortlist?

Just as I was struggling to make sense of the five Oscar best-picture nominees, along comes Justin Chang's terrific analysis in the industry trade, Variety. (The graphic accompanied his essay.)
Of best-picture nominees Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, Chang discerns a split between "the booze, oil, blood and testosterone" of Clayton, No Country and Blood, movies about men doing wrong, and the daughter themes of Atonement and Juno, which center on the actions of young women trying to put things right.
Help me tease out the subtexts here. We have male-centered movies that are death-focused and female ones that are life-affirming (this, despite Atonement's prolonged battle scene at Dunkirk)? We have the masculine movies with mature males and the feminine ones with underage girls, an asymmetry seen in so many Hollywood movies. (Are teenage girls less threatening than mature woman? Michael Clayton, with Tilda Swinton as the corporate lackey who hires a hitman, would bear this out.)
What other themes do you see in the films of 2007? Among the Oscar nominees? And in this closely-contested Oscar season, what are you betting will take the gold?

Join me in the annual Oscar prayer, invoked 56 years ago by emcee Danny Kaye: “The Academy asks that no acceptance speech be longer than the movie itself.”
While I'm told that got a big laugh, was it the best speech?
When Julia Roberts (pictured) got her gold guy for Erin Brockovich, she crashed up against the Academy's 45-second acceptance limit and didn't stop: "A girl's got to have her moment. Everybody tries to get me to shut up. Didn't work with my parents. Didn't work now."
When Robert De Niro got his for Raging Bull, he thanked its real-life subject, boxer Jake La Motta, adding "Even though he's suing us."
When Jane Fonda won her first (for Klute) at a time she was a polarizing figure for her outspoken criticism of the war in Vietnam, she took her prize, paused pregnantly, and observed, "There's a great deal to say. But I'm not going to say it tonight."
Even more understated was Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win the best actor prize, who noted, "It has been a long journey to this moment."
These are my nominees for best Oscar speeches. Yours?

According to a study released Friday, the ratio of males to females in Oscar-nominated movies is roughly that pictured on this Ocean's Eleven graphic. (The male to female ratio here is 4:1; the male to female ratio in Oscar-nominated best pics over the last 30 years is 3:1.) I feel like a broken record broken record broken record reporting on this disparity year after year. Twenty years ago, studio executives said that this disparity existed -- that actors were more numerous in films and were paid higher salaries --because they were in action/adventures and those movies made more in the global box office. Ten years ago, studio executives said that this disparity existed because women moviegoers preferred seeing men to women on screen. (My argument to the execs both times was that moviegoers could see only what was at the multiplex, and that, by and large, were male-driven narratives.) What's the Twinkie Defense going to be this time? How should/can the movie industry remediate this gender/diversity imbalance?

If Hollywood were high school, Joel and Ethan Coen would be the class clowns. (Pictured are the Oscar-winning sibs, best director, best picture and adapted screenplay winners for No Country for Old Men). One of the more amusing aspects of the Academy Awards ceremony was watching the Minneapolis-born, anti-Hollywood New Yorkers reluctantly accept their prom-king status. Unlike James Cameron, they don't want to be kings of the world, only of their corner of the sandbox, as Joel said in his acceptance speech.
At the 80th annual Academy Awards -- the lowest-rated broadcast in Academy history -- the twin themes were No Country for Old Men and No Oscars for American Actors. When Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) took the lead actor prizes, and Javier Bardem (No Country) and Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) the supporting, I wondered why, even when casting American roles, filmmakers are shopping abroad. Better training? Cheaper salary expectations?
Another thing that struck me is that apart from Ratatouille (which took the best-animation prize) and Juno (best original screenplay), precious few of the American movies enjoyed Oscar prestige and mass appeal. Your theories? Favorite Oscar moments? Your verdict on Jon Stewart as host? I thought he owned the room like no host since Johnny Carson.

Will Ferrell makes an enchanting Elf, a cluelessly comic Anchorman a hilarious Old School fratboy. He's both funnier and Stranger than Fiction. But in Semi-Pro (pictured), where he plays Jackie Moon, owner/player/promoter of a 1976 American Basketball Association franchise, yet another benign lunatic in competitive sports (see: Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, Kicking and Screaming) Ferrell's Everydoofus character is wearing out his welcome. Yeah, it's mildly funny that Jackie Moon has hopes as high as his 'fro and an IQ low as his points-per-game- average, but is that the extent of the humor? Love that Ferrell inhabited a character in Stranger than Fiction, don't love his work as a sketch comedian parodying the dumb-cluck jock that Woody Harrelson has perfected. Not coincidentally, Harrelson is Ferrell's co-star in Semi-Pro and wipes the floor with him. Am I too harsh here in thinking Ferrell is cheapening the coin of the comic realm?