A Year End Digression: The Best Game I've Ever Seen

Tomorrow is a significant anniversary in my life for fifteen years ago I was a sophomore in high school. It's not that I was unhappy, per se, but I was still in that arduous process of trying to form my identity. We continue forging it all our lives but in a lot of respects you're beginning to lay the groundwork at that point. It's not easy, and that's why high school can be so tough. Much of my youth I took solace in the few close friends I had and in Nebraska Football. I loved Nebraska Football, and I, of course, still do with a passion that borders on the purely insane, which is fine with me.

They are my team. When I chose them I invested my heart and soul into them. They are it. I have no other team and I want no other team, even if I only get to commune with them 12 or, if the college football gods deem them worthy (like this year - tomorrow, baby, high noon CST), 13 days a year. (Yes, I said commune. Nebraska Football is communion. If you don't think so then you and I already have a problem.)

A lot of people ask me, "Why Nebraska?" Jerry Seinfeld has noted that when it comes to sports you're essentially "cheering for laundry." There is some truth to that, I suppose, but if you have a team, a team that becomes your team for a lifetime, there truly is something deeper. When I became a college football fan the sport was in a transitional period, moving from the grind-it-out, run-every-down offenses to the wide-open, pass-every-down offenses. Nebraska proudly stayed who they were. They liked who they were and, in turn, I always liked them for it. They weren't just the stubborn old guy who refuses to change, either. Remember, their boring, old offense ran circles around razzle/dazzle/eye-candy offenses in the mid-90's, like the resplendent 1998 Orange Bowl in which the great Ahman Green tore Tennessee's defense to shreds play after play while the TV cameras kept showing a young Peyton Manning wilting away, shaking his head, helpless, on the sideline. They were who they were but they were good at it. (It's what made the changes under the god-forsaken Bill Callahan regime so grotesque. Not only were they no longer good, they weren't who they were.)

But I also latched on to Nebraska for reasons lot more simple. I didn't like a lot of things about my school and I didn't like a lot of people that went to my school and a lot of those people cheered for the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Iowa State Cyclones. (My eighth grade basketball coach, the demonic Mr. Blake, was an Iowa State fan and he made Jeff Essink - the only other Nebraska fan in my whole grade - and I run extra laps at basketball practice the day after our Huskers beat Iowa State. Yes, that's a 100% true story. So don't ever tell me I haven't suffered as a fan.) I didn't want to do what those people did. So ultimately I chose Nebraska. You can call me a bandwagon jumper because it's true. We're all bandwagon jumpers. The question is, do you ever jump off? I haven't.

I didn't jump off in 1990 when Iowa won the Big 10 conference and went to the Rose Bowl while Nebraska was viciously pummeled in its last three games.

I didn't even jump off in 1992 when the Iowa State Cyclones pulled off a 19-10 upset of Nebraska so gargantuan it is still referenced by Iowans (the normally pitiful Cyclones don't have a lot else to talk about). I remember listening to the end of the game on radio with my dad and thinking, "My God, am I gonna' hear crap about this for weeks." At church the next morning, I did. Don't think because we were in the house of the Lord my fellow sunday schoolers weren't gonna' talk trash. They'd earned it. My best friend Jacob's dad told me, "Wear a Nebraska shirt to school tomorrow. If they're your team, you have to." So I did. And it was Nicholas Curnes, just one of many jackasses roaming Waukee High School, who caught a glimpse of my sweatshirt that Monday morning and said, "Nebraska? They really sucked yesterday."

No, Nebraska was never really bad (like Iowa State) when I was growing up. They always won at least nine games and they always went to a bowl (back when going to a bowl really meant something) but this was when they were playing in the Big 8 Conference which, in all honesty, only had two other good teams - Oklahoma and Colorado. Sometimes Nebraska would beat them, sometimes not, and then they would go to their bowl game and get shellacked by whoever they played. (Their 22-0 loss to Miami in the 1992 Orange Bowl in which they got something like four first downs the whole game and clearly had no business being on the same field is still the single most depressing Cornhusker game I have ever watched, which, by the way, I watched to the stomach-churning bitter end.) They were a weakling, a (gulp) bully. They beat up on bad teams and, in turn, got beat up by good ones. That's how it went in the late 80's and early 90's. During a period of four years they defeated not a single ranked team.

It's why even though they entered the 1994 Orange Bowl on New Year's Day undefeated and #2 team in the country they were considered 17 point underdogs to the #1 Florida State Seminoles and their Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Charlie Ward. A Des Moines sportswriter, I remember, was taking bets as to whether or not you would want to turn off your TV at halftime (my hometown produces such clever journalists!). The Washington Post's now famous Michael Wilbon that year had termed Nebraska "the biggest fraud in college football every single solitary season." Ouch.

But there was something different about this Nebraska squad. (Note: They were the first Husker team I ever saw in person.) They experienced some close calls during the season to some pretty mediocre teams which made them suspect to most people but, damn it, they were resilient. Their motto was "We Refuse To Lose". And, oh yes, they had a sophomore quarterback named Tommie Frazier. My friend Dan was recently talking to a friend of his who is also a Nebraska Football fan and Dan mentioned my love for the team. "Tommie Frazier is his favorite player," said Dan. "Everybody's is," replied his friend.

There are people who did not vote for former head coach Tom Osborne when he ran for governor (he was one of the finest football minds of all time, no question, but I'll refrain from addressing his politics) but I don't think you could find a single person in the entire state who would say a bad word about #15. My friend Jana attended graduate school at Nebraska and while helping her move I met her roommate, born in Nebraska and a die-hard fan, and we instantly commenced to trading Tommie Frazier stories. ("Remember when he bounced off the Colorado guy trying to tackle him and then threw it sidearmed to Ahman?" "Totally. Remember when he got the first down against UCLA on a sprained ankle?" "Completely. Remember when....") I also met a girl in Scottsdale who attended the University and claimed to attend some frat party where Tommie Frazier happened to be and while other football players we're, you know, doing what college football players do at frat parties Tommie Frazier apparently never took a drink and refused flirtatious advances from various females by saying, "I've got a girlfriend." (I have no idea if that story is really true but I like to think it is. People have always written that about him - he was not only a great football player but a great person.) He never played a down in the NFL and it doesn't matter. He was a great college football player. One of the greatest. Many players shrink when the spotlight shines brighter. He grew stronger. He was never stronger than he was January 1, 1994 when he outplayed the Heisman Trophy Winner.

It was a sloppy, frenetic game that saw Nebraska - who had not been ahead in a bowl game since I was in 6th grade - go up for the fleetest of moments 7-0 on Corey Dixon's 71 yard punt return for a touchdown which caused me to scream so loud our poor pet dachshund ran upstairs and hid under the blanket of our love seat for the remainder of the game. Alas, a clipping penalty (which NBC cameras never could find, but let's not dwell) made it all for naught. Nonetheless, that remains to this very day the single most exhilarating sports moment of my life. (I can still see the whole play in my mind - Corey slanting to the right, the key cutback at midfield, the last Seminole fruitlessly grasping the tail-end of Corey's jersey before relenting and allowing the little guy into the holy land of the end zone.) Every great thing that happened to the program for the rest of the decade was foretold right then and there, on a technically meaningless play that was entirely meaningful.

They were up 7-6 at the half but disastrous events seemed to be occurring right and left. They lost their leading rusher to injury, and then their leading receiver went out with an injury too. A starting linebacker went down with a broken arm and, for God's sake, their star defensive player (Trev Alberts) was already playing with a splint on his arm. Then in the third quarter Florida State went up 15-7 on a touchdown (though NBC replays made it appear the player fumbled prior to crossing the goal line, but let's not dwell). But none of this mattered (they refused to lose, remember?) because Frazier drove Nebraska downfield, they scored a touchdown, only to miss the two point conversion, and were down 15-13 at the start of the 4th quarter.

Nebraska got the ball back and Frazier drove them downfield again, tragically throwing an interception at the Florida State 11 yard line. He buried his head in the Orange Bowl grass and I buried my head in our basement carpet.

No matter, because Nebraska's defense held to give the ball back to the offense and Frazier drove them downfield again, this time all the way to the Florida State 4 yard line. Byron Bennett kicked a field goal and Nebraska was up 16-15 with 1:16 left. I remember looking at my sister, who had come downstairs late in the game to watch, and saying, stunned and in disbelief, almost hallucinating, "They're going to win the national championship."

I spoke too soon. Charlie Ward rose to the occasion and drove Florida State downfield and they kicked a field goal of their own to go up 18-16 with 21 seconds left. Game over?

Hardly. Frazier drove Nebraska downfield again. The quarterback who was always accused of not being able to throw, threw a laser-like strike over the middle to Trumane Bell allowing him to catch it perfectly in stride as the clock ticked down, nearing zero. Bell's knee hit the turf on the Florida State 29 yard line with one second left. The clock should have stopped. Except it didn't. It rolled to zero. Florida State players and fans rushed the field and their coach, Bobby Bowden, was doused with Gatorade.

The NBC announcers cried out the game should not be over, and so too did Nebraska coach Tom Osborne. (It should be noted this was long before instant replay.) Amidst the mass chaos, the officials finally figured it out and sent both teams back to the sidelines and, after lengthy debate, placed one tick back on the clock.

(Imagine, please, that this happened to your team in a game to decide if they win the sport's ultimate prize. Can you comprehend how emotionally fragile you would feel? In the span of five minutes I almost had 17 heart attacks.)

After so much commotion, the teams would line back up and Nebraska's Byron Bennett (never the most reliable kicker, I'm afraid) would try a 45 yarder. It sailed way wide left. Game over.

It was horribly depressing and it filled me with overwhelming grief - very briefly. In fact, the next day I went to Valley West Mall with my friend Kris rather than sitting at home sulking as I'm wont to do after devastating defeats. I wore my Nebraska hat with my held my head up high. I saw a guy there with a Nebraska hat, too, and we exchanged smiles and nods because we knew what each of us had been through the previous evening. They lost but they didn't, you know?

Things were different now. You could feel it. The tide had turned. Nebraska won the national championship the following year and I started to feel a whole lot better about myself. The game itself didn't change my life. It just happened to come at the moment when my life was on the cusp of change and so it always had that context to it. There was a week in my coming summer that had great impact on me (and, in fact, I'm currently prepping a script based on that week as we speak) and I felt my life take a big upswing afterwards.

The first day back at school after that game, as I stood at my locker, Nicholas Curnes (yes! the same Nicholas Curnes! perfect real life irony!) strolled past, paused, looked right at me, and I readied for the inevitable insult. Instead Nicholas Curnes held up his index finger and thumb, a scant millimeter apart, and with feint but obvious respect in his eyes said, "This close, huh?"

I've never been more proud of my team.

Gran Torino

There is simply not another person who has ever lived who could have made and starred in "Gran Torino" other than Clint Eastwood. It's just that simple. (Charles Bronson, you say? Nope. The bonding with the kids would not have felt as natural. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) As aging Korean War vet Walt Kowalski, a bigot and a racist of the highest order, who subsists on beef jerkey and a bounty of Pabst (Blue Ribbon), while keeping an eye on everything and everyone from the vantage point of his porch, Eastwood squints and growls his way through a storyline that, quite frankly, would have been absurd in the hands of anyone else. Yeah, it's still a little absurd anyway, but not as absurd.

As the movie opens Walt has just lost his wife. His sons (who strangely look alike - I say strangely because movie sons rarely ever look alike) don't seem to know their dad and he doesn't seem to know them. They want him to move into a retirement home. I think you can figure out that does not happen.

From his porch Walt sees the Korean family next door. He does not care for them. He calls them a few names (none of which I will be repeating here). But when a gang headed up by the cousin of Thao (Bee Vang), the boy next door, arrives and tries to initiate Thao to their life by having him steal Walt's beloved 1972 Gran Torino, well, Walt's gonna' have to get involved.

He stalks the street like an avenging angel (an avenging angel who likes to spit chaw, that is), pulling real guns and imaginary guns, to alternately save Thau and his sister Sue (Ahney Her) from riff-raff in the neighborhood. He seems to believe only in himself, nothing else, not even God, as we see whenever the young Catholic priest asked by Walt's late wife to keep tabs on her husband after her death turns up.

"Why didn't you call the police?" asks the priest after one confrontation with the ornery gang.

"I prayed they would show up," Walt replies, "but no one answered."

Does he bond with Thau and Sue? Well, of course. Would they be a little more aghast as he continually makes discriminant remarks directly at them while breaking bread? Probably. But then I liked how the movie did not really soften Walt in any way as the movie progressed. The unflattering names he calls people at the start of the film are the same unflattering names he is calling them at the end of the film. He helps the family, obviously, most especially Thau, getting him out of his shell and making a massive sacrifice to change the boy's life, but not by having to sacrifice who and what he is. Refreshing.

Eastwood makes Walt as believable as is possible for such a character. He offers a world of insight with but a lone grunt. He makes lines that on paper probably did not amount to much howlingly hilarious. (My favorite: "What are you peddling today, padre?") Any other 70 year old man in these situations would look so far out of his element the entire film would stop dead in its tracks but Eastwood keeps it rolling.

And with him also behind the camera his famously economical filmmaking style also lends a helping hand here where in other films (like "Changeling") it fails him. If this film had employed an abundance of slow motion shots or pop music or artfully violent scenes it would have descended into vigilante genre madness. Eastwood just shows these people going about their business in a fairly real world.

(I must mention there is one utterly disastrous moment during the film's running time. It is a shot that occurs near the end and involves placing Clint in a familiar, shall we say, pose. You'll know it when you see it. Oh, Joseph and Mary, you'll know. Was that shot really necessary? I mean, did Paul Haggis guest direct that shot?)

I had a strange sensation the entire time while watching "Gran Torino". I kept thinking none of this should be working. But it was working. Clint Eastwood, man, is an almost unbelievable force of nature.

The Reader

There were many aspects of this film, based on the noted book by Bernhard Schlink and directed here by Stephen Daldry, that had held an awesome sway over me. It is an epic movie, stretching from the 50's in post-WWII Germany all the way to the mid-90's, that knows the power a woman known for only a few months can hold over a lifetime and how art can transform and redeem. Oh, yes, the holocaust is addressed, too.

After a momentary present day passage we flash back to a teenage German boy Michael (David Kross) in the 50's coincidentally winding up in an affair with the older Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a ticket taker on a trolley. (Yes, it's coincidence. Damn near all movie romances began via coincidence.) It is an affair that is most decidedly about sex but quickly becomes about something more - reading. Michael is always being assigned new books and stories to read in class and since these sexual encounters occur after school lets out he brings his books with him. She wants him to read to her. He does. Constantly, endlessly. These reading sessions consume both of them. He ignores everyone and everything else. But one day, not long after Hannah has earned a promotion at work, he turns up at her apartment to find it empty. She is gone without having left even a slightest trace.

Several years later Michael is in law school and his professor (Bruno Ganz) takes he and his classmates to the trial of several former Nazi prison guards for murder. As fate would have it, one of these guards is Hannah. As the trial proceeds Michael comes to realize something vital, something that could assist Hannah in her case, and debates offering the information. I will leave it to you to discover whether or not he does.

More years pass and we are re-introduced to Ralph Fiennes as the older Michael, a divorced man with a daughter, still cut off emotionally from everyone around him, except, it seems, for Hannah, for whom he still harbors feelings and with whom he finds a way to re-connect. Sort of. Can he forgive her?

The performances, to begin, are exemplary. After my post last week I should probably have to excuse myself from the room when discussing Ms. Winslet but, yeah, that's not gonna' happen. She's fantastic, as usual. It is quite clear why she was offered the role. Few actresses are so willing to be naked (literally and figuratively) on camera. But she keeps the passion in the early scenes at a cool, key removal. You always sense she is hiding something. Yet, there are moments when you can also see her trying to reclaim a life that inevitably must have been taken away once she joined the Nazi league. More on her in a minute.

Despite this being his first film Kross is convincing. He shows youthful, clueless exuberance early and makes a real transformation to a weary, guilty collegiate self. Fiennes, too, plays his role as required. He is quiet. Fragile. He has never really gotten over those early events of his life.

The film, as you may or may not know, has not been treated too kindly by most critics and by no means is it perfect. In particular, the middle passages, set in the law school classroom, are weak. In these moments Daldry and his screenwriter David Hare seem to be trying to offer a morality play, pointedly, obviously. In fact, every sentence spoken by Ganz's professor, I think, ended with the words "...of/about what?" As in, "you're scared of what?" "You're angry about what?" "You're disappointed about what?" Do law school professors spend a great deal of time asking questions? Probably. But here it is merely an excuse to allow the students to expound on the rights and wrongs of the holocaust that we have been over many times in movies and books past.

For most of its running time, however, the film itself does not take sides, and when it does not is when it is at its finest. One utterly brilliant strategy of "The Reader" is to make Hannah Schmitz real without sympathizing. If there was a flaw in Spielberg's "Schindler's List" I always felt it was focusing on a villain (played by Ralph Fiennes) who was so insistently insane. Wouldn't it have been more powerful to use a person who was just doing his duty? This is where Winslet's work becomes extremely important. She never plays the part as a saint. Never. In the courtroom she attempts to explain why she did what she did and, no doubt, many Nazis in the concentration camps were acting for the same reasons but she does not cry out for absolution. (I don't think Hannah's "reveal" functions as an excuse, either. She is shamed by it but if it was an excuse wouldn't she have used it herself?) This clearly is not a sentiment meant for casual moviegoing on a Saturday afternoon. This is heavy stuff. But it's important because it's true. Of course, it is. Nazis weren't all sadistic and mentally unstable like Amon Goth.

So, too, than is the acting by Kross and Fiennes in this regard important. They are both clearly aware of the moral boundries crossed by Hannah and the character of Michael is never searching for her salvation, as shown in a crucical encounter late in the movie with a woman played by Lena Olin. But the movie also makes it clear that in spite of her dark past Michael still feels something for her, very deep and very true. He cannot let go of it. How could he? How could she? The sequences in which they re-connect (which allows Winslet to get into the old lady makeup) are sublime and moving. These are two distant people who have only ever felt really connected, I think, to one person in their lives - each other. Sins of the past or not, this is impossible to shake.

That's the movie's argument. At least, that is what I came out of the movie feeling. "The Reader" does not feverishly spend its time trying to humanize Hannah. It lets her be a human.

The 2008 Prigge Hymnal

As the close of the year sneaks up on us it is time to name the out-loud official 2008 Prigge Hymnal, the songs (and albums) I discovered over the previous 365 days that I didn't simply enjoy but that made me feel, whenever and wherever I listened to them, transcendent. (Note: Not all of this music was actually released in 2008. But it's all music I encountered for the first time in 2008.)

* "2 Hearts", Kylie Minogue. Does it mean anything in the "grand scheme"? Is it astoundingly complex? Will it alter the musical landscape as we know it forever and ever? Does her singing revolutionize that which can be achieved with vocal chords? Absolutely not. It's just two minutes & fifty one seconds of pure, unadulterated pop music perfection.

* "The Cheapest Key", Kathleen Edwards. As far as I'm concerned, there just isn't much real rock and roll left. What is real rock and roll? Cue up this tune pronto. Kathleen can write a kiss-off to an ex-lover better than anyone in the biz and this one is a mighty aggressive kiss-off ("f is my favorite letter as you know"). It's two-and-a-half minutes, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-done. It kicks a-- but doesn't outstay its welcome. The bridge is beautiful in that it plays the music off the words. "Don't write me off," she sings, "here comes my softer side." And then a lovely, little piano fill followed by, "And there it goes. 'Cuz I been on the road to long to sympathize." The piano cuing the exit of of said softer side. Perhaps rock and roll is dying, perhaps not. But it's still alive. This is proof.

* "Another Country", Tift Merritt. A beautiful ballad that might get categorized as alternative-country and not plain country since, make no mistake (none!), this is not some god-forsaken Faith Hill power ballad crap-fest. Which is why categorizing it at all is totally unfair. It's just a ballad. A beautiful, aching ballad. (Aching? Did I really use that window-dressing word? Yes. I did. Listen to it. It aches. What do you want from me?) You can practically see the angels with their harps up in the big sky beyond doing whatever it is they do and hearing her sing this song below and saying to one another, "Wow. Do you hear that? It's kinda' good, isn't it?" It's the be-all, end-all defintion of a ballad. Okay? Better yet, buy the actual album, read Tift's liner notes and then listen to it. Oh, dear God, your heart won't just break, it will shatter.

* "Crying", TV on the Radio. Their last album "Return to Cookie Mountain" had some moments that left me cold and some possessing brilliance so immense I still don't feel I fully comprehend it. Their new album "Dear Science" was, to my ears, more consistent, and this track was the one that really smacked me in the face with a musical frying pan. I don't really know what constitutes a dance track, I suppose, but, screw it, this is a dance track. (Never mind the lyrics. You'll get to those on the 67th listen.) It's a track that makes me (want to) dance. This is the dance track supreme. It's the Westminster Abby of dance tracks. It's the funky molasses. If I owned a club I would play songs just like this one. And no one would come. Which would be fine with me.

* "Click, Click, Click, Click", Bishop Allen. How is this song not on the charts? How is it I'm not walking down the street and hearing people hum it? How is the song not in a Kodak commercial? (I'm actually thankful it's not but, really, I'm also stunned.) How is it more bands don't take advantage of the glockenspiel? How is it this song has not become the new "Hey Ya'"? How is it they're not selling out Madison Square Garden? How is it we've not already entered the re-hype after the backlash after the inital-hype stage with this band? How is it we haven't set aside a copy of this album in a vault in the Smithsonian so we can make sure to have it when the aliens finally come and ask us about "music"? How is it....okay, I'll stop now.

* "I'm Scared", Duffy. Wales' answer to Everyone's Favorite Alcoholic (i.e. Amy Winehouse). And much like Everyone's Favorite Alcoholic, Duffy is inspired by the girl groups gone by, doo-wop, and motown but isn't quite as all up in your business about it. She's more modern and decidedly less "Look at me, damn it, I'm retro! RETRO!" You can see the influences but it's clear she's not merely copying the formula. Therefore I happen to think she's a lot better than Everyone's Favorite Alcoholic (and far less likely to be caught in public smoking crack) and it's "I'm Scared", equal parts wounded and hopeful, that gets to me the most. Her voice is like the sexiest stuffed-up-nose you've ever heard, I swear to God. You know how people always talk about Torch Songs? Well, I think Duffy has Lantern Songs. (By the way, I was able to see her live back in October and if you thought she might just be a studio creation I can assure you she is not.)

* "Slow Show", The National. One word often used to describe a couple of my favorite musical acts (people who hail, respectively, from New Jersey and Canada) is Cinematic. Well, if you want to use one word to sum up this song I think Cinematic would be appropriate. It's so cinematic, in fact, it was used over the trailer for the David Gordon Green film "Snow Angels". The sound is totally in widescreen but it's more Sofia Coppola than Francis Ford - intimacy in a vast setting, a climax that takes it up a notch in a more subdued manner. And the lyrics, to which I can relate, of Matt Berninger about an awkward young man in a social situation from which he desperately wants to flee - "Can I get a minute of not being nervous?" - so he can get back home to find comfort and a reprive from anxiety with the woman he loves where in one of the most romantic conclusions to a piece of music these ears have ever heard he intones over and over "You know I dreamed about you for twenty-nine years before I saw you."

* Little Rock Star, Lucinda Williams. We should establish - though I've established it before - that I'm a Lucinda Williams fan. A big one. Long ago I drank the Lucinda kool-aid. She could release an album where she does nothing more than sneeze and cough and I would probably wind up arguing with people about how its intellectual mastery is above all our heads. Every album she's made is fantastic but I think every Lucinda fan (just like every Bruce fan or probably every Beatles fan) has one album they cherish above all the others. Me? I'm a "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road" man through and through and through and my favorite song is track #3, "2 Kool 2 Be 4Gotten". And while there have been plenty of Lucinda tunes I've enjoyed since I had not one found that had simply sounded as beautiful as "2 Kool 2 Be 4Gotten". Until now. During my first listen of "Little Rock Star", as the guitar solo ended, I was so wound up, so overcome, so stricken with joy, I wanted to hurl my entire body through the nearest sheet of drywall. Oh, Lucinda, whatever would I do in this melancholy world without you?

* "Jack Killed Mom", Jenny Lewis. There are so many great songs off her new album, like "Black Sand", where her voice is so luminescent that if you actually look at your speakers while it's playing you will see them glow, and like "Sing A Song For Them", which is the sort of thing that should be served up at churches all across the country, but it's "Jack Killed Mom" that really tears the roof off the sucker. A rock 'n roll hoedown about, well, a tortured mother/son relationship that with its serious infusion of gospel comes across as a Bible story gone terribly wrong. Or, to say it another way, it's the wicked step-sister to "The Seeger Sessions".

* Dying Is Fine, Ra Ra Riot. There is no question - absolutely none - that if I were about to, shall we say, expire from this earth and could hear only one song from 2008 before said expiration I would cry out for "Dying Is Fine". (And their leave-you-srawled-on-the-floor, the-world-suddenly-has-meaning "Ghost Under Rocks" is nearly as good.) Now, let me clarify, there is a version of this song on their debut LP "The Rhumb Line", and it's quite good, but that's not the version to which I'm referring. No, the version I'm naming as my #1 song of the year comes via their self-titled EP (the production is not as good on the EP but that fact is meaningless), which is about three minutes longer. Why were they afraid of the length? Who knows? Perhaps to make it more "radio-friendly" but then how is a song this marvelous ever going to get past the snipers employed by radio stations to ensure quality songs never get on the airwaves?

If you're looking for the neat & tidy description of the song I suppose I could say it's "The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle" Springsteen meets The Arcade Fire meets "You Can't Always Get What You Want" meets "London Calling" but no, no, no, no, that just won't do. It's the Pacific Ocean at dusk with just the right amount of coldness in the air, the tide rolling in, then rolling back out, then rolling back in BIGGER, then rolling back out, then rolling back in BIGGER, then rolling back out, and then the woman you love comes up behind you and snuggles with you and the tide rolls back in and maybe it's even BIGGER - it probably is - but you don't really know because you're more concerned with this beautiful woman snuggling with you. Does that even make sense? I don't know. It would if you'd heard this song.

And, of course, I haven't even mentioned Rebecca Zeller's violin at the end (wait, I guess I have) which was, to me, the single most beautiful artistic moment of all 2008. After all, it's rare to hear the sound of your own heartbeat on someone else's CD.

Oh, dear God, I'm digressing to mammoth proportions. I can't help myself. Look, it's my humble opinion that this song is as good as music can possibly get.

The Most Wonderful Place Any Time of the Year

The other day I listened to writer Marc Acito offer up this cinematic-related holiday monologue on NPR. His line about "any excuse to exchange silver bells for the silver screen" almost made me cry.

Read it, and then have yourself a merry Christmas.

Highway To The Hyperbole Zone: A Dissertation On My Favorite Actress

My cinema obsession tends to be misunderstood here at the office and, thus, when a co-worker asked the other day what movies I was looking forward to seeing this holiday season I replied, practically before she was even done posing the question, "Revolutionary Road." "Which one?" she asked. I tried to explain it and tried to explain how cool it was that Kate & Leo were re-uniting and then mentioned how taken I am with the whole of Kate’s work and ability and they said, "Really? Kate Winslet?" My co-worker stated this with a look on her face that would have made you thought Kate was Sarah Palin. She continued, "Why her?" At this point, if it had been a movie, thunder would have rolled as I pontificated like some greek god on high about the immensity of her abilities. But instead I gave some horribly inconclusive response. I suppose I don't want to frighten people here (more than they already are of me) with my fanciful fits of OCD. So guess what, loyal readers? You get to bear the brunt. This blogger has turned on the Fasten Seatbelts Sign. It's go time.

Despite the gargantuan running time of James Cameron's 1997 box office behemoth "Titanic" I can pinpoint in it the exact instant I became smitten with Kate Winslet's acting. She has tracked down Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson to thank him for his actions the previous night when, in a fit of teenage melodrama, she pondered hurling herself off the back of the ship and he arrived in the nick of time to talk sense into her. They walk and talk. They stand at a railing, the setting sun illuminating their faces, and they agree one day they will go to a pier in Santa Monica where he will teach her to ride a horse "like a man" and "chew tobacco" and "spit" like a man. "They didn't teach you that in finishing school?" he asks. She replies: "No."

There. Right there. The way she says "No." Dear God. The Line Reading to end all Line Readings. Rose DeWitt Bukater, who Winslet is playing, isn't this prim and proper and sophisticated woman putting on airs. She's just a frickin' 17 year old girl. And not a single person in her life has ever treated her like a 17 year old girl until right here, right now, with Jack, and that's what that one word says.

And then Jack drags her to a different place on the ship because, by God, he's gonna teach her how to spit and then she reverts back to this impostor of an older woman saying over and over that she can't do this but he insists and she relents and he teaches her how to spit. (I know a lot of people didn't like the spitting scene. I don't care. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Anyone who doesn't like it is an idiot. Yes. An idiot. No, I'm not going to lay out a point-by-point analysis of what makes this scene so great because some things just need to be left unsullied. But if you don't like it you're a complete idiot and that's that.) Jack hawks up a loogie and sends it flying and says to Rose "Do you see the range on that?" and she nods and says "Mmmm hmmmm." Again, so, so, so in character. So genuine, so earnest.

And, thus, eleven years ago to damn near the day I was gone with Kate Winslet. Forever and ever. There was no going back. I realized I was seeing the Greatest Actress Of Her Generation even though I didn't realize it-realize it. I could go on and on. Look at later how she runs around the lower decks of the sinking ship with the axe. She looks exactly like a teenage girl whose never carried an axe once her life running around the lower decks of a sinking ship with an axe. That is not easy. I mean, I've been trying for years to sell people on how good she was in "Titanic" and you know what? I'm done. Take it or leave it. I don't care. If you can't appreciate the depth and quality of that performance it's you're f---ing loss. Not mine.

(Okay, I apologize for being harsh just then. But when it comes to the things I love most I just can't help it.)

That's what she can do. She can cut right down to the bottom line, to the truth, to the core, to the heartbeat of the character, in a single moment. She doesn't need a colossal monologue to do it or or an entire scene structured around revealing an important emotion or colorful assistance from the camera or even unnecessary voiceovers. She just does it.

Look at the start of "Little Children" and the way her character helplessly digs through her backpack for her daughter's treat that she forgot to pack. An absent-minded, daydreaming woman who is not, shall we say, a model mother. And, yeah, we get this impression from the film's voiceover and the way they present the character in comparison to the other mothers surrounding her but look at the way she digs through the backpack. You didn't NEED all that other stuff because she says it all on her own in that instant with mere body language.

Look at the way she calls herself "a vindictive little bitch" at the start of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". You think she might be kidding but you think she might be serious but you think she might just be trying to get a rise out of the Jim Carrey character. Whether or not she is isn't the point, see? It's what the character herself thinks and we're not sure because Winslet doesn't tip her hand. You feel just like Jim Carrey feels because you don't know either. (By the way, don't presume the fact that the best performance of Jim Carrey's career happening opposite her in this movie was some random coincidence. She can significantly up anyone's game. She can support but not overshadow.)

But there's so much more at work, too. All her singular moments of impeccable characterization add up to one thing - namely, transformation. So few actors and actresses take you on a true journey but with Kate that is always the case. These arcs can be traditional ("Titanic"), traditional yet still made convincing by her in terrible movies ("The Holiday"), traditional in untraditional ways ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and, best of all, static arcs. We set out from camp on a journey and when the journey is done we realize we've made a scenic circle ending....back at camp.

As many brilliant turns as there are in the Winslet Canon there are two, neither of them Oscar nominated, that I think might just be her best.

In "Hideous Kinky" (her followup to the biggest box office hit of all time which was a glorious way to take a piss on what Hollywood wanted her to be) she portrays a hippie-sorta' mom who up and takes her two little kids with her to Morocco even though they possess no desire to be uprooted from their current home and school and whisked away to some foreign land. Ms. Winslet is required to offer us two distinct traits: 1.) She is sincere and genuine and idealistic. 2.) She is a very bad mother. We might refer to this bit of acting as Walking The Highwire. Why would you want to like a bad mother? Well, you want to like her because, you know, she is sincere and genuine and idealistic. You like her in spite of herself but you do because Winslet maintains a likeable glow while also making it quite clear she is perhaps not entirely fit to be raising children.

The movie is rather repetitive in how you see her make mistakes and then not learn from her mistakes but she seems to make that repetition tragic. You want her to grow up in the face of the error of her ways but you don't think she is going to except than maybe you think she will and so you root that she will and then she doesn't. Again I say, that's not easy.

("Hideous Kinky", too, would work as a fantastic companion piece once you've seen "Revolutionary Road" if you wondered - don't read the rest of this sentence if you haven't read the book; I say again, don't read the rest of this sentence if you haven't read the book - what might have happened had Frank & April Wheeler actually made it to Paris with their kids.)

Kate's very first role, however, in Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures" (one of the 25 best movies ever made) is absolutely riveting, and not just because of how frickin' good she is but because of how it foreshadows her entire career - re-proving to all the naysayers that, yes, the movie gods exist.

Based on the real life story of two girls in 1952 New Zealand who develop a much too-deep relationship (perhaps a lesbian relationship) who, because of their closeness, are kept apart by their respective parents, leading to extremely tragic consequences.

As Juliet Hulme, Winslet, in her introduction to cinema, enters her new schoolroom, eyebrows raised ever so slightly, examining each and every student as if simultaneously probing them and letting them know there is a new sheriff in town. It is French class and so the haggard, old teacher instructs her to take a seat at the front of the room and invent a French name for herself ("Antoinette") and within seconds Juliet, or Antoinette, has stood up and corrected an error the teacher has made on the blackboard. She does it with a smile that is so bemused, so self-assured, so cocky, you laugh way out loud.

It is revelatory in that she summarizes her character in a single line reading but also in how it essentially represents the fact Kate is showing up on the movie scene and immediately letting the old guard (of actresses and actors) know - I'm here, you better account for me, 'cuz I already know the rules of the game as good, if not better than, you.

Or as Roger Ebert wrote so eloquently of Jack Nicholson in "Chinatown": "Great actors don't follow rules. They illustrate them."

My Christmas List: Top 5 Stand-Up-and-Cheer Movie Moments

The one thing I've noticed in regards to movie audiences in Chicago as opposed to those in Des Moines and Phoenix is this - they tend to applaud much more often. You couldn't have used an onslaught of brooms to thwack a mess of applause out of anyone in a movie theater in Iowa or Arizona but here in the Windy City it seems to be the norm. (Truth be told, they sometimes applaud too much. I enjoyed aspects of "Wanted" but it is not worthy of any clapping, people.)

I've never actually stood up and cheered at a movie but, oh, I have come close here and there, perhaps even on the edge of my seat before having to restrain myself. I mean, really, does it get any better in a movie theater than when you literally have that desire to rise to your feet and hoot and holler because you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for great cinema to come along and you suffer through oh so much dreck and - at last! - finally you've happened upon it? I remember each of these as if they happened yesterday and wish dearly I could re-live them again.

1. Million Dollar Baby. Scrap (Morgan Freeman) takes Maggie (Hilary Swank) to that crummy little diner for her birthday, and gives his amazing speech (is there any other kind of speech in this movie?), and then the other boxing manager walks in - the one Scrap has asked to come so he can take the manager duties away from Frankie (Clint Eastwood) and get Maggie her title shot - and Scrap leaves and Maggie walks right up to the manager and tells him there's no way she's ever leaving Frankie and Scrap's voice-over follows it up with, "Maggie always did like taking 'em out in the first round." In fact, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a second and cheer right now.

2. Almost Famous. The inimitiable young scribe William Miller (Patrick Fugit) has just been backstage at the Stillwater concert and met legendary "band-aid" Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) and now they stand outside the arena together in an empty parking lot and she asks him if he wants to go to Morocco with her, and he asks her to ask him again, and she does, and he says "yes", and then she advises "it's all happening", and he says it too, and they turn and walk in opposite directions, and the music that's playing over this is just about perfect (excuse me, it is perfect), and, well, why aren't you standing up and cheering right now, you emotionless robots?!

3. Kill Bill Volume 2. The Bride (Uma Thurman) has just been buried alive in a pine box and then we flash back an extended sequence featuring her training many years ago with the legendary Pai Mei and, lo and behold, it turns out one of the very tactics used in her training is breaking through a wooden board with her fist at extremely close range and so we cut back to the present and the camera above and moving in on The Bride's grave as this wonderous - utterly wonderous - spaghetti western, mariachi horn-influenced music begins to play and then we're inside the grave with The Bride and she gets herself together and as the music swells she puts her fist to the board and busts her way through and pushes her way through the dirt and, oh, I just can't help it, people! Woo-freaking-hoooooooo!

4. Shakespeare in Love. Oh no! The production of "Romeo & Juliet" is about to go on except the young guy playing Juliet has lost his "womanly" voice and so the theater owner (Geoffrey Rush) bustles into the nosebleed section of the theater to advise of the financier of this development only to - as luck would, of course, have it - happen upon Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) who, you may or may not know, had been starring in the play in the guise of a man until her true identity was revealed and she was thrown out. "Do you know it?" asks the owner. She replies, breathlessly, in a way that gives me goosebumps as I type this, "Every word."

5. Batman Begins. Midway through the film, keeping up a particularly obnoxious persona to maintain his secret identity as Batman, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) approaches Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) and tells her, "Rachel....all this. It isn't who I am." Rachel replies, simply, harshly, "Deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you." Then, near the end of the film, Rachel has just been saved from the clutches of some zombie-like bad guys by, of course, Batman. He hops onto a ledge, ready to leap off and go do battle with the film's arch-villain, when Rachel steps toward him and says, "You could die. At least tell me your name." He looks at her and declares, "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me." "Bruce?" she asks, getting that look in her eye. And he turns and swoops off as the music swells. A recent showing of "The Dark Knight" at a friend house's house ended with an approximately 52 minute argument between several parties about whether "Batman Begins" or "The Dark Knight" was better. It's a personal preference, obviously, but I preferred the former, and I did because the latter had no moments like this one.

My Great Movies: Meet Me In St. Louis

"Sometimes, when I am very happy, I sing to myself. Sometimes, when they are very happy, so do the characters in 'Everyone Says I Love You.'" - Roger Ebert

This is what the esteemed Ebert wrote in regards to Woody Allen's great little musical from 1996. But that quote always seemed appropriate when also considering the 1944 musical "Meet Me in St. Louis", directed by Vincente Minelli and starring the one, the only Judy Garland (who would go on to be Minelli's wife not long after production). Very early one of the young Smith daughters, Agnes (Joan Carroll), enters the household that will be the primary and spectacular setpiece for the next couple hours and sings, "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair...." and so on. You may have heard this song. Then Grandpa Smith (Harry Davenport) enters and sings the same lines. The infamous 1904 World's Fair is set to descend upon the Smith family's hometown the next year and, hey, they're all so darn happy about it they sing out loud.

My generation was not raised on musicals. Rarely do they get made in this day and age and if they do, they are often considered spectacular failures (Coppola's "One From the Heart", last year's "Romance & Cigarettes"). Why is this? The most likely answer is the musical is typically not meant to represent reality. They are more inherent to the stage than the movie set. In most musicals the story (or what passes for one) stops dead in its track so the well produced song & dance number can make its dazzling appearance. The audience came for a show so let's put one on.

"Meet Me in St. Louis" was different. It was one of the very first movie musicals to integrate its songs into realistic settings. The tunes are all parts of the story and comment heavily on the action taking place within the actual story. This is rare, and is why, I think, I went along with it from the beginning. I've never danced in rain puddles like Gene Kelly but after Nebraska beat Colorado a few weeks ago I did a happy little dance around my kitchen while getting ice cubes for my cocktail glass and poorly singing a bit of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down".

Consider one of the two most famous numbers from the film, "The Trolley Song". A group of people, including Garland's Esther, have assembled to take a trolley down to the burgeoning fair grounds. Esther was hoping the boy she loves, the boy next door, John Truett (Tom Drake), would be accompanying them. He does not show up. The trolley leaves and everyone bursts into song, not just because they screenplay dictates "burst into song" but because they are elated to get their first glimpse of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition's setting. Esther, on the other hand, dejectedly sits by herself. What does this fairground visit mean without the presence of the boy for whom she pines?

But alas, someone suddenly turns up, desperately running after the trolley! Why, it's John Truett! Now she gets a smile and excitedly descends to where he scampers after the trolley, singing along with the others. The song isn't just meant to be a show-stopper but a reflection of Esther's mood. These songs are not similar to the songs of last year's "Once" but their use within the film is the same.

The movie is divided into four acts, or vignettes, each one representing a certain season. Summer to autumn to winter to spring, briefly, to close things out. The World's Fair occupies everyone's thoughts but there are other developments. In spring we find the oldest daughter, Rose (Lucille Bremer), waiting on a proposal from Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully) in New York City, except he plans to do it via phone at dinner time and the only phone in the whole house is stationed off to the side of the dining room and surely no one wants to say "I do" when their entire family is within earshot. This is also when Esther first spies "the boy next door", instantly becoming smitten. Luckily, their brother Lon (Henry H. Daniels Jr.) is having a going-away party, as he is set to enroll at Princeton in the fall, and Rose quickly invites John Truett to attend.

The party itself contains several tunes but if you assume it to be unlife-like I strongly advise you to attend the next party at the apartment building I live in and wait to watch as it dissolves into a very un-rhythmic hoedown to Alabama's "Dixieland Delight" and then tell me how unlife-like it is.

The autumn vignette is set on Halloween, serving up the Smith household's exterior with sumptuous orangeish lighting, and initially focuses on youngest daughter Tootie (Margaret O'Brien), usually referred to as being rambunctious or perhaps precocious. As my friend Rory pointed out, though, perhaps "psychotic" would be a better term. Consider the exchange at the start of this scene establishing the Halloween plans of young Tootie and her sister and how their neighbor not only poisons cats but beats his wife with a "red hot poker." Uh, beats his wife? Shouldn't these claims be investigated a bit more deeply?

The prevaling theme in relation to the character of Tootie is the power of a child's imagination and overcoming the fears that can often be conjured by that imagination but older movies tended to be a bit less subtle in their delivery of themes, as seen here. None of this is meant to completely excuse Tootie's sidestory. I admit to sometimes skipping over these parts when I watch the film. And then there is O'Brien's performance which to this modern day moviegoer can sometimes get just a bit too grating.

Yet, the film is wise enough to know that the scariest Halloween event has nothing to do with poisoned cats but the discovery that the home you know and love will soon be no more. Once everyone has re-gathered at the house Mr. Smith sits them down at the dinner table and announces that because of a promotion at work the family will be leaving St. Louis behind at the start of the new year for a new home in New York City.

This understandably leaves the family heartbroken and so Mrs. Smith steps to the piano and plays "You and I" as her husband joins to sing along. Again, this is no showtune, this is two people using music as solace, and not unlike those moments when I play "Racing in the Street" by Bruce just so I can hear those last lines about he and his baby riding to the sea to wash their sins from their hands. And notice how the shot is framed - with the stairs in the background, allowing everyone to come back downstairs to gather around the piano, re-united as a family, the song healing wounds. This is the "Tiny Dancer" sequence in Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous" 56 years before it happened.

The third vignette in winter may be the most memorable and is why "Meet Me in St. Louis" is often considered a Christmas film. A dance on Christmas Eve that finds Esther without a date when John Truett is unable to get hold of his tuxedo, only to be saved by gallant Grandpa who paves the way for an expected surprise that proves knowing what is going to happen often does not deflate a viewer's joy. (Sadly, if there is one character in the whole film with whom I can say I truly identify it would probably be Esther's initial dance partner, the hapless Clinton Badger. Poor guy. I always feel bad for him.)

Then, of course, in arguably the film's most famous sequence, Garland sings "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to her younger sister who is lamenting the fact they are all on the verge of leaving the only home they've ever known. But again, this song may not be precisely as you remember it. Critic Eric Henderson has noted how this venerable yuletide anthem "actually reveals itself to be a bitterly ironic lament for the unreliability of everything, even the holiday spirit."

As we know, Judy Garland starred in another movie, a more famous movie, also involving the power our home holds, but the older I get the more I feel distanced from it because it primarily represents the childhood fear of leaving home and, in fact, the acclaimed author Terry McMillian has noted, "The land of Oz wasn't such a bad place to be stuck in. It beat the farm in Kansas." But "Meet Me In St. Louis" seems to address that as the older you get, the more you bounce around, you realize you're on a journey to find home, and sometimes you don't realize right away that you're there, that you're where you want to be.

Have I found home yet? I don't know. But I sense myself getting closer. On Election Night as I sat in my friend's apartment, watching the new President give his speech to thousands upon thousands of people in Grant Park, receiving voicemails and text messages from family and friends in relation to how the city I lived in was suddenly the center of the universe, I could have almost carried out my own version of the greatest closing lines any movie has ever provided, "It's right here where we live. Right here in Chicago."

Frost/Nixon

At the end of this take on the infamous David Frost/Richard Nixon four part interview there was a line that popped into my head, all on its own, without me having to search for it, and it came, of all movies, via this year's "Get Smart" when Steve Carrell says with deadpan grace: "They're bad guys, but they're people too." This is not Oliver Stone's Nixon. This is Ron Howard's Nixon.

"Frost/Nixon", written by Peter Morgan and based on his play, is not just a historical re-enactment, it gets inside the characters heads a little bit, if not as much as one would hope, but also at times feels more like a documentary, and not just because the film employs the tactic of showing tidbits of supposed interviews with the principal players long after the fact. It seems as if most of this is happening at too great a distance.

Yes, at the very start of the film you will be aware Frank Langella is playing Richard Nixon but that feeling will quickly pass. There is a brief sequence of Nixon at some banquet giving a most un-Presidential type speech and it is horribly painful and awkward. This is a good scene because it paints Nixon's motivations without having to say them (though, of course, the following scene does then go ahead and say them): he has been relegated to this sort of crap because he must stay far away from Washington and the political game as a result of his fall from grace. He needs to exonerate himself and so when this David Frost comes calling with the siren of a substantial payday for a TV interview, the ex-President and his backers agree because they figure Frost isn't up to journalistic snuff.

As played by Michael Sheen we quickly suspect that indeed Frost isn't up to snuff. ("Did he just call him a performer? Not an interviewer or a journalist, but a performer?" asks another character of Frost at one moment.) He favors shoes without laces (the horror) and enjoys picking up lovely ladies with witty banter on transatlantic airplane flights and seems more concerned with the potential ratings windfall of the interviews than having them be - as his colleagues Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) wish - the trial Nixon never had.

Trouble is no American TV network wants to pick up and subsequently pay for this broadcast and so Frost finds himself having to finance the whole operation out of his own pocket.

My main issue with the film is an insufficient feeling of real arc to David Frost's story. We're told that, yes, he's struggling financially and his TV shows are going off the air and at one point he tells us on the nose - as they would say in screenwriting class - "I'm in this for all I've got". But it just doesn't seem enough. You never feel as if the stakes are getting raised scene to scene. He's telling us he's in it for all he's got but we don't necessarily believe that to the case. "Are you really sure he's in this for all he's got? That's not the impression I'm getting," you want to say.

The real life interviews thankfully follow the traditional cinematic formula of Frost getting beaten to a mangy pulp in the first three interviews and then suddenly reversing himself via a motivating factor (a drunken call from Nixon) and becoming the British Mike Wallace to get the ex-President to confess. (If real life hadn't followed this formula, rest assured, Ron Howard would have re-written history.) But, again, the film fails to make this sudden swing convincing. Really? Now he's gonna' take off the gloves and attack? Does he have a switch on the back of his head that someone just flipped?

Oh, and "It happened that way in real life" is not a suitable answer.

I didn't feel much for Frost which makes it all the more strange that I felt a little something for Nixon at the very end. The speech he gives to his interviewing opponent is rather quite poignant, and no doubt it was calculated as such. But then I had another thought. At least Nixon was in touch enough to sit in that chair and finally stop deluding himself and come to the realization that, yeah, he messed some stuff up. If George W. was in that chair do you think he'd ever grasp that?

Doubt

There were many notions rattling through my head after seeing this hard-hitting drama set inside a 1964 Catholic school. We don't really know ourselves, only God does. Right? Isn't that how it supposedly works? We know not what we do? And so if we don't really know ourselves we don't really know anyone else, even though a lot of times we like to presume we do. We're all sinners but Jesus died for our sins (that's what I was taught) so that makes it all good, doesn't it? So I sinned. So what? He died for them, so I'm all set. Aren't I? I mean, religion is a really good security blanket, isn't it? It's....okay, I apologize. I'm stopping now. Any time this subject enters the fold I tend to get distracted.

"Doubt" is not distracting. It has an awesome power. It is one of the best films of the year. It was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley and was based on his stage play that earned a Tony and a Pulitzer and it does not seem to have lost anything in its conversion to screen. The grade school is governed by Principal Sister Aloysious (Meryl Streep), a nun who is not in love with the modern world and seems to constantly cast a suspicious eye toward Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffmann) who believes times have changed and the church needs to do the same.

But one day Father Flynn summons Donald Miller, the only African American boy at the school, from the class of Sister James (Amy Adams) to the rectory all by his lonesome. Sister James, a naive daughter to Aloysious's overbearing mother, suspects something may be amiss and tells Sister Aloysious of this development. "So," says Aloysious, "it's happened."

What's happened exactly? No one knows. Perhaps Father Flynn sexually abused the boy, perhaps not. But perhaps it does not matter either way because perhaps Sister Aloysious has had it in for him from the beginning. But perhaps all this is just the plot and really explains nothing.

Translating his tale to the movie screen, Shanley does a solid job making it cinematic. At various points he uses camera shots and those shots alone to get his point across, like a scene at the dinner table where Sister Adams is essentially forced to finish her food and a moment when Father Flynn takes Sister Aloysius's seat at her desk without either discussing it. He may use one too many "Third Man"-esque tilted camera angles, but that's a minor complaint. And yes, there are two sequences in Streep's office - first between the main trio and then between just Streep and Hoffmann - that clearly show their stage roots but they are so breathtaking you will choose to forget.

The acting, as expected, is fantastic. Hoffmann plays his cards close to the vest, but does a remarkable job always making us aware there is something else, something deeper, behind those eyes. Viola Davis at the mother of the boy at the center of attention has a single but pivotal scene that is garnering Oscar nod talk, and certainly she is excellent, but I'd like to also commend Amy Adams for her fine supporting work. She is a marvelously versatile actress and she seems to shrink in age as Sister Adams, a person too easily influenced, her line delivery childlike. Listen to how she says: "But I just like pageants."

But Lording over them all is the incomparable Streep. She has a finely-tuned nastiness that can either present itself in a back-handed way or right to your face, whichever she chooses. (The argument that Sister Aloysious is some sort of cartoon monster that could not exist in the real world is one I can swiftly cut down with but five words: My High School Spanish Teacher. She not only acted like Sister Aloysious, she looked like her - sans the nun get-up. Case closed. I win. You lose. Find something else to bitch about.) She's more humane than you think, witness her turning a blind eye to another nun beginning to suffer from blindness, but, despite her line of work, she's no saint. She glides through scenes with a self-described "certainty" that maybe, just maybe, isn't quite as certain as you or she thinks it is. Shanley's writing lends a little more depth, and a little more, and a little more, as it goes along, but Streep is also able to bring this on her own. At a crucial moment Hoffmann says in response to a question, "Hmmmmmm....." And then Streep responds with a "Hmmmmmm" of her own. I laughed out loud, not because it was funny, though it was, but because it was just so....good.

At the center of this movie there is a mystery, yes, but "Doubt's" mystery is merely a set-up for a much larger mystery and one that cannot simply be explained away with a conventional cinematic resolution. Doubts, baby, we've all got 'em. Aloysious doubts Father Flynn. But is that really what she's doubting? Politicians blame other politicians while failing to ever blame themselves. Football coaches blame the referees while ignoring their poor third down strategy. People, all people, whine about the stupidity of other people and sometimes we even look to the heavens and call God a f---ing a--hole because, well, that prevents us from having to look in the mirror. It's easier to doubt someone else than to doubt yourself, isn't it?

My Christmas List: Top 5 Elvis Presley Movie Moments

I adore Elvis movies. Have you ever seen one? I've seen a lot of them, whether by renting them or by tuning in once a year (usually around Elvis's birthday) when AMC runs Elvis movie marathons. Many of them are comedic masterpieces though, of course, most of the time they weren't supposed to be comedies. Is that harsh? Kinda', probably. Elvis was forced into a lot of the movies he made by Colonel Tom Parker and some of the time, particularly in the later movies, the King's disinterested expressions and mannerisms on camera gave away the fact he knew the movies were of poor quality. His earliest movies are commonly considered to be better and, say, "Jailhouse Rock" is quite good when compared to, say, "Paradise: Hawaiian Style" but, let's be completely honest, none of them, not even the supposed better ones, are cinematic landmarks. Yet, that's exactly why I so often am able to find joy in watching them. In fact, I once wrote a screenplay in which a man convinced Elvis is still alive strikes out on a search to find him and, sure enough, winds up in the midst of his very own Elvis movie (singing and everything)! I never quite got that one right but it was fun to try.

In any event, of all the Elvis movies I've seen these are the five moments that always bring a smile to my face.

1. In "Viva Las Vegas" Elvis is race car driver/singer Lucky Jackson (no, I didn't make that up). Lucky meets and instantly becomes smitten with beguiling Rusty Martin (Ann Margaret) and romances her. His initial (and finest) romance attempt occurs when he spies her poolside giving swimming lessons, grabs a friend's guitar that is ever so conveniently sitting in the open on a chair and dashes off to serenade her, though instead the two end up in a duet - "The Lady Loves Me". (Best Lines - Him: "Tonight she'll be holding me in her arms." Her: "I'd rather be holding hydrogen bombs.") As they saunter around the outdoor pool singing he follows her up onto a diving board where she "cleverly" forces him to back up all the way to the edge of the diving board (No, Elvis! Don't you see what's coming?!), still singing and strumming guitar, mind you, and pushes him off and into the water.

Ah, they just don't make 'em like this anymore. (Watch it here.)

2. In "King Creole" Elvis plays janitor/singer Danny Fisher. But the most memorable moment here does not belong to the King. In fact, it belongs to Walter Mattheau - yes, that Walter Mattheau, the one who won an Oscar. In this Mattheau plays gang boss Maxie Fields, Elvis's nemesis. And in one particularly dreadful moment of pure evil he tells off Elvis by declaring (and I'm not making a word of this up): "Maybe I'll fill your room with stinkbombs every night." (Note: This is often considered the "best" Elvis movie and while it's certainly better than most of his films, particularly the later ones, I think this passage shows it's still really not all that great.)

3. In "Fun in Acapulco" Elvis plays lifeguard/singer Mike Windgren. Once he was a trapeze artist in the circus, you see, but a terrible accident has left him with a paralyzing fear of heights. As expected, it comes to pass that Mike was execute a cliff dive into the ocean. He stands atop the cliff, his hair perfectly coiffed, the entire hotel watching from afar, and jumps. He survives, of course, and emerges from the water after a 136 foot dive......his hair still perfectly coiffed.

4. In "Roustabout" Elvis plays roustabout/singer Charlie Rogers. After a brush with the law he hits the road only to wind up working in a circus while simultaneously falling in love with a young carnival worker. But at one point Charlie happens upon a few troublemakers at a local bar looking to pick a fight. Charlie readies himself in a fighting stance to take down them on and thunders, "Come on!" The troublemaker, though, takes note of Elvis's stance and frightfully declares, "No way! That's karate!" and flees the scene.

5. In "Double Trouble" Elvis plays singer (just a singer - this was a later role and by now they weren't even trying to gussy up his parts) Guy Lambert who goes on tour in Europe and finds himself being pursued by two women and a pair of bumbling (is there any other kind?) jewel thieves, all for reasons too pointless to explain.

There comes a moment when Elvis is dangling from a window ledge by his fingertips, a river far below. But Elvis can't hold on, lets go and crashes into the....ground? Wait, yes! That's the ground! I can't - wait! Now he's crashing into the water!

Confused? Let me explain. In one of the poorest examples of editing I've ever witnessed, the film actually fails to cut in time to mask the stunt. You most literally see Elvis fall from the window safely to the ground disguised as water below and then a split-second later the movie cuts to the "special effect" and you see him fall into the water. How in the world this escaped the people who screened the film prior to its release (if, in fact, they did screen it before its release) or, you know, the editor, I don't know. But it did. Rent it some time, if you don't believe me, and you will be thankful most editors aren't drunk when doing their jobs.

Milk

I think "Milk" is a fairly important movie for this time and place. (Highly critical note: Its importance does not automatically make it the Best film of the year.) You watch the film portray Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), who in 1977 became America's first openly gay man in public office, and you watch him battle to fight off California's Proposition 9 and you think, "Boy, we've come a long way." Oh. Wait. You don't think that. My bad. You think, "Hey, didn't California just pass Proposition 8 last month?" Ah, progress.

You think about how this very week the supreme court in Iowa is set to hear a case for same-sex marriage and how proud it would make you to know your home state became the first one in the midwest to redefine the rules of marriage.

You think about how a fresh, invigorating, hopeful young guy is set to assume duties at the White House next month except than you see in "Milk" where Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) compares fresh, invigorating, hopeful Harvey Milk to Mayor Daley and you pray our new President doesn't fall victim to the rigaramole that is the political game.

Of course, while you think all that the fact remains that you are still watching a movie. A biopic movie. You wonder if director Gus Van Sant can put his own unique spin on "Milk" so that rather than merely being important it also becomes, you know, good.

If you didn't know Harvey Milk was assassinated don't worry that I just gave it away because the film gives it away right at the start, framing the film with a voiceover of Milk's as he makes a long confession into a tape recorder that is only to be played in the event of his assassination.

He meets young Scott Smith (James Franco) on the night of his 40th birthday and as the clock strikes midnight he says aloud, "Forty years and I haven't done a thing." He soon will. He and Scott move to San Francisco, initially open a store, but quickly become involved in the gay rights movement. He literally stands on a soapbox making speeches that will draw more and more people as time goes on while losing none of their power and year after year he will crusade to become an elected official in the city of San Francisco.

One thing the film does very intelligently is show that while billing himself as Harvey Milk vs. The Machine the only real way to affect any change is to become part of that very machine. Milk becomes more conscious of this fact with each passing year. It was one of the things I liked most about the film. It truly does make you aware of the muck of the political process that accompanies the necessary spouting off about Change and Hope. (There is one scene I really liked where the camera circles the characters discussing a possible gay rights ordinance....while they all chow down on Chinese food. It felt drenched in reality. A huge political moment transpiring with the scent of Kung Pow chicken in the air.)

Less successful are the inevitable Scenes At Home where we see Milk's personal life being strained. First he drives away Scott and than he drives away the very unstable Jack (Diego Luna) who sort of haphazardly seems to enter his life. I understand all this was part of who Milk who was and maybe there just isn't an interesting way to get this stuff across onscreen. I don't know. If I was making a biopic I would hold month-long brainstorming sessions 24 hours a day to try and find a unique way to present the Scenes At Home.

A film of this sort lives and dies by its performances and "Milk" has got one great one and one that I would term almost extraordinary. What is a single word that leaps to mind in relation to Sean Penn? How about this - transformative? He seems capable of becoming anyone and does so yet again. He manages to convey the incredible toll politics can take on a person while still managing to remain upbeat in the face of it all. Not easy. Most importantly, though, he never makes Milk feel like a martyr. Perhaps he ended up being one - he has certainly made a great difference even in death - but while still alive we are simply seeing a person doing what he feels needs to be done.

But the most spectacular turn of the film belongs to Josh Brolin as Milk's initial ally in city government and the eventual assassin, Dan White. He is not granted a plethora of screen time and so in what he does get Brolin is required to show us a person who is perhaps not all that comfortable around Milk but still is open enough to try and work with him so long as they have each other's backs, politically speaking. There is rage hidden in White and Brolin shows us that without showing us that - get what I'm saying? There is one mesmerizingly unsettling scene where a drunken White confronts Milk. He's the bad guy but he too never asks for sympathy and makes the fateful day when White shows up at the courthouse with a gun chillingly matter of fact.

There is a certain guy who played a certain villain in a certain superhero movie who was certainly good who certainly may end up with the supporting actor Oscar but I would like to go ahead and declare today that your real winner for that statue should be Mr. Brolin.

Van Sant's direction too assists somewhat in raising the film to the level of more than just a standard biopic. He blends real-life footage with that of the movie and also employs music skillfully. A particular shot at the rally where the camera chooses to ignore the crowd and hovers on Milk for the duration was very effective.

In the end, it's not just an important movie. It's a good one, too. Not great, but good. That said, I still think it's important to see - particulary today if you happen to be part of the Iowa Supreme Court.

My Christmas List: 5 Favorite Movie Character Names

What makes a great movie character name? I have to say, this was tougher than I imagined when I sat down to compose this list. I was tempted to throw names out there like Ferris Bueller, and Lloyd Dobler, and Peter Venkman but those names, I feel, were made more famous by the performances that accompanied them. I didn't want those sort of names. Everyone listed below is a great character but I wanted names that irregardless of the actor/actress who portrayed them or how the character was presented simply stood out on the page and made me say aloud, "Good name. Good name." These are those. What are yours?

1. Sofie Fatale, "Kill Bill Vol. 1"
2. Fielding Mellish, "Bananas"
3. Will Kane, "High Noon"
4. Marty DiBergi, "This is Spinal Tap"
5. Ellen Ripley, "Alien"

Getting Symmetrical Again

So a few months back, as the most loyal of my readers may recall, I opined in relation to the double-fisting of my two favorite beers foreshadowing the moment a few days later when my two favorite movies appeared on TV at the same time one channel apart. At the end of that piece I wrote: This, of course, begs the question, what is this foreshadowing?

As time passed I began to feel it was probably foreshadowing nothing and that this wonderous occassion of four of my favorite things coming together in pairs was but a blip on the radar. Oh, but how wrong I was! It turns it was foreshadowing something and something I neither predicted nor expected.

The Entertainment Weekly Fall/Winter Movie Preview issue talked at length about the upcoming "Revolutionary Road", re-uniting Ms. Kate Winslet and Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time since that movie that made some money awhile ago, but it failed to mention another movie being released this December called "The Reader".

I first came into contact with this movie during a preview for it prior to "Slumdog Millionaire". Why is it significant? I'll tell you why, because it stars....wait for it....wait for it.....Kate Winslet!!!

A December double dose of my favorite actress?! Hark the herald angels sing, indeed! In fact, people are already trumpeting a Kate vs. Kate Oscar showdown! Tell me, what is more worthy of a back-to-back Boo Yah (Boo Yah!) than that?!

Movie gods, you've done it again!

A Digression: An Open Letter To President-Elect Obama

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

I like you. I respect you. I support you. I think you will do a fantastic job as our nation's President. You seem to be a nice, thoughtful, genuine person. However, there is one notable concern I have in regards to you.

You have gone on record as supporting a playoff for college football and you are quoted as saying, "I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this."

Oh, really? "Serious fan", you say? Are you saying that I'm not a "serious fan" and you are?

Very well, Mr. President-Elect, can you tell me the sport's longest rivalry? (Hint: It doesn't involve the university where you attended law school.) Can you tell me what player holds the NCAA record for most passes caught in a single season? Can you?

Can you tell me, Mr. President-Elect, the oldest bowl game aside from the Big Four? (I'm just assuming you know the Big Four, what when considering you're such a "serious fan".) Can you tell me the last defensive player, other than Charles Woodson, to win the Heisman Trophy? (Don't ask an aide! Don't look at your laptop! Tell me off the top of your head!) Heck, you're from Illinois so tell me the starting quarterback for Illinois the last time they won the Big 10. You do know the last time Illinois won the Big 10. Right? Right?

Did you know that the Oklahoma/Nebraska game of 1971 was played on the last weekend of the season? Did you know that both teams would have qualified for the playoff, what when you consider they were ranked #1 and #2? Did you know that it is generally regarded as the greatest college football game of all time? So I guess, Mr. President-Elect, using the NFL as our model and how teams already qualified for the playoffs usually rest their best players in the final games of the season, a playoff for college football would have cost us this contest.

Not to mention, Mr. President-Elect, we would have lost the drama of two other so-called "Games of the Century, #1 UCLA and #2 USC in 1967 (as well as UCLA's improbable 13-9 win over USC two years ago, one of the more kinetic upsets of recent times) and #1 Texas and #2 Arkansas in 1969. We would have lost Michigan's Tim Biakabutuka carving up undefeated Ohio State for 313 rushing yards in 1995 because the outcome would not have mattered to the Buckeyes. And that means, Mr. President-Elect, we would have lost the greatest individual effort I have ever witnessed since my inception of college football fandom. Can you please, please, please think about that for one freaking second?!

Do you realize, Mr. President-Elect, that with a playoff in all likelihood Oklahoma and Boise State would not have played at the end of the 2006 season? (How do I think this? Because if you simply go by the "expert" systems posited by all these playoff proponents wherein you take the top 8 or top 16 teams the rankings of Oklahoma and Boise State in all polls do not coincide for a first round pairing. Oops!) And that if they had not played we would have been denied the hook & lateral and the "statue of liberty" and the Boise State player proposing to his cheerleader girlfriend? That we would have been denied what a whole lot of people have called one of the greatest games ever played? Do you realize that? My God, does anyone?

Did you know, Mr. President-Elect, that in its very first game of 2004-05 college basketball season the University of North Carolina, who would go on to win that year's National Championship, were stunned by the University of Santa Clara? Nope. Bet you didn't know.

But I bet you do know, Mr. President-Elect, that Appalachian State stunned Michigan in their very first game last year in arguably college football's greatest upset of all time. Do you know why you remember the latter and not the former? Because, Mr. President-Elect, in college football every game matters, and every game matters because there isn't a playoff.

It's why, Mr. President-Elect, perhaps the hardest hitting game contested since players wore leather helmets without facemasks occurred in September 2006 between Auburn and LSU. The loser was out of the national championship race. It was essentially a playoff game....in the first month of the season. It's why college football has contested its de facto national championship games in September (Florida State/Miami in 1987) and in October (Notre Dame/Miami in 1988) and in November (the three aforementioned Games of the Century). It's why I stayed up past my bedtime on a school night back in September (while you were probably too busy "campaigning" to watch) to witness Oregon State upset USC. The game meant something and would have meant nothing with a playoff. College football shouldn't require one massive, overhyped spectacle that often is more about the commercials than the play on the field to decide its champion when its biggest game can most literally come anytime, anywhere.

I also really hope, Mr. President-Elect, that you don't feel college football needs a playoff because - as every pedantic sportswriter will so "astutely" tell you - that's how every other sport does it. I really, really hope that's not what you think. I mean, I know you're about change, but you're not about conformity. Are you? Are you?

It's why, Mr. President-Elect, in November 1993 we could go from #2 Notre Dame defeating #1 Florida State one week to underdog Boston College upsetting #1 Notre Dame the next week to me nearly weeping into the cheese & crackers my father served up as the final seconds ticked off in Nebraska's 21-7 win over Oklahoma earning them a chance to play for the national championship in the Orange Bowl the week after that. Every other sport may have a playoff, but every other sport does not, in any way, shape, or form have the week-to-week drama of college football. Or, in the words of Chuck Klosterman, Mr. President-Elect, "How, exactly, are three exciting weekends in December better than four or five months of weekly sweeping consequence?"

Let me guess, Mr. President-Elect, you were one of the cool kids in school, weren't you? Well, consider college football the band geek of school, okay? (Especially when you take into account the prominent use of marching bands in the sport.) Ever seen one of those movies, Mr. President-Elect, where one cool kid bets another cool kid that he can't transform the band geek into the prom queen? Well, all the cool kids no one really likes (i.e. pedantic sportswriters who couldn't name more than one wide receiver the Texas Tech QB threw to all year and part-time college football fans) constantly feel the need to try and gussy up the band geek (i.e. real, passionate college football fans) who never wanted to be gussied up in the first place. And what tends to happen if the gussying up takes place? The cool kid sees the band geek for who she really is, that's what. So once people gussy up college football with a playoff it's inevitable they will see the sport for what it really is and that it never really asked to be changed in the first place, except then it won't be able to go back to the way it was and, thus, it will become a cookie-cutter sport. A mirror image of everything else. We have our own unique idenity, see, and we don't mind being different. Perhaps then, Mr. President-Elect, you should stay at your lunch table and we'll stay at ours.

In closing, Mr. President-Elect, I ask, with all due respect, and I truly, deeply mean with all due respect, that when it comes strictly to the subject of college football and a playoff, please shut the hell up.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Prigge