A few people I would have liked to see get a nomination today:

Joan Allen for "The Upside of Anger." She gave a smart, funny and frenetic performance as woman who gets furious (and pretty drunk) after her husband abandons her. She could have come off as bitter or pathetic, but Allen makes you love her.

Or Naomi Watts for making "King Kong" work. The special effects were incredible, but without that blond beauty in Kong's hands gazing at him with fear and love, the movie would have failed. I'd like to steal away Dame Judi's umpteenth nomination and give it to Allen or Watts.

George Clooney for "Good Night and Good Luck." I loved his low key Fred Friendly much more than his (admittedly good) turn as a spook in "Syriana." Strathairn was great as the Murrow, but Clooney's flesh-and-blood Friendly kept the movie from being a hagiography.

Woody Allen finally makes a great movie again and the Academy only gives him a screenplay nomination! "Matchpoint" will still be playing in three decades when "Crash" will be looking like the preachy public service announcement that it is.

Okay, enough complaints. Now I'd like to thank the Academy for having the sense NOT to nominate "Walk the Line" for Best Picture. It's not a bad movie, just a decent one with a great performance by Reese Witherspoon. She deserved the nomination, the movie did not.

[Hear Stephanie Curtis on MPR's Midday audio archive, 01/31/06]

Thank you Thank you Thank you for your comments on crash.
I saw the film with a black friend and we both agreed it was 45 minuets too long.
I recognize "emotional momentum" plays a roll in many people's critique but as a stand alone move it was laborious and campy.
In the future I will hold your reviews with more weight due to our alingment on this movie

Thanks

Dave

I disagree with your kudos to the academy for not nominating Walk the Line. I thought it was a damn good movie all around. In my mind that and Munich were the best pictures of the year. I like Capote, and I'm seeing Brokeback Mountian later today, so maybe that will take my vote away, but I think Walk the Line was superior to Crash (even though I liked that movie, it was pretty preachy). I agree the acting made Walk the Line, but I think the direction, the sets, the costumes, and the story itself are all great, and Johnny Cash's life at that time was done amazingly.

I enjoyed "Crash;" it may not stand up as a great movie over time, but it is timely and raises issues in moving, intelligent and honest ways. Performances were great. It's a style I like, too, much like the way Kasdan ("Grand Canyon") ties seemingly disparate charcters and events together in ways we might miss in our own lives without the long-range view a director can give us.

"Brokeback Mountain" was beautifully filmed and is a story well-told beautifully told. What strikes me is that if it were a film about a man and a woman, it would be a terrilby dull story, an uninspiring tale of adultery and infidelity. Apart form the cinematography, its beauty is how terribly ordinary the characters are, except it is about two men. It is more powerful than a politically chagred film about gay rights or marriage equality would have been. It's genius is how mundane the story is, apart from the gender and orientation of the two lead characters.

And any conversation about "Brokeback" brings me back to "Philadelphia," a terribly dishonest film, expect for the centerpiece, which was Denzel Washinton's character's transformmation. Tom Hanks' character got sick and died, his family supported him, his employers recjeted him; sad, but not a big deal. Denzel had to wrestle with his self-undertanding, his own sexuality, and actually changed during the movie, which is what the audience was asked to do through his character. I get angry when people talk about it as a Tom Hanks' film or mention Antonio Banderas before they even remember Denzel's role and performance, one of the best if not the best of his career.

I second your accolades for Denzel. He raised the level of "Philadelphia" above the TV movie-of-the-week standards. You know what Denzel movie I liked that no one seemed to pay any attention to? "Out of Time." There are so many Hollywood thrillers that don't deliver any tension. I found myself completely wrapped up in "Out of Time." I hope his new Spike Lee movie can deliver.

And I'd like to thank the Academy for not nominating "Cinderella Man."
I haven't seen all of the best pic nominations, but I'm thrilled to see the emphasis on good and unique stories. I enjoyed "Walk the Line," but couldn't you just predict the whole thing, even if you didn't know who Johnny Cash was?

PS "Hagiography"...a worshipful or idealizing biography. Good word!

I almost drove off 35W this afternoon when I heard Stephanie Curtis describe Crash as being a "preachy public service announcement." Is she refering to the Cronenberg yawner of '96, I wondered. I crossed my fingers that she was, but no, she wasn't. She was refering to exactly what I thought she was referring to: the most challenging and poignant film of the year. At first I felt personally affronted by what I was hearing, but then I started piecing some things together about Curtis that put everything in perspective for me. I recalled hearing her give an enthusiastic endorsement of the 40 Year Old Virgin, which is an embarrassingly horrid joke-of-a-film. I also remembered that the photo of Curtis on the Movie Maven blog showed her to be a young Cuacasian, which, in this case, I guess, speaks to her naivete. Lastly, and this is purely speculative, I admit, I realized that she lives and works in the Upper Midwest, which isn't exactly Los Angeles. These bits and pieces helped me understand how Curtis could fail to appreciate how accurate and necessary films like Crash are in today's society. What is not excusable, however, is why a respectable organization like Minnesota Public Radio would put its name anywhere near such a lousy and inaccurate critic. And King Kong? Give me a break!

I too was stunned to hear this glib dismisal of Crash by someone who apparently failed to understand it through lack of multicultural background. Stephanie, no offense, but a few comments: The opening line that you quoted in such a sarcastic way was a mood-setter, not the major point of the film. The movie is about the ways we misperceive each other and also about how we change each other and how events in life can save or destroy us (the two policemen representing one case of each.) The serious/humorous observations of the conspiracy-minded car jacker, the frustrations of the Iranian store owner hampered by low English and mistakenly targeted as an Arab, the cleverness of his daughter as she negotiates between cultures, the conflicts of the Black movie producer who has traded some of his manhood to protect his career, the failure of his wife's priveleged background to save her from the racism around her and the failure of the young policman's good intentions to save him from unconscious racism within - all these things go deep and ring true. There are people like these within these different groups, saying these same things; I know because I have lived with them. And the humor, the beautiful music, the moment when the little girl was miraculously saved from being shot (which I suppose you thought was corny) - well, it doesn't feel possible to explain any of this to you, but I'm saddened that you may have prevented others from seeing this excellent film.

Not even gonna touch the Crash discussion except to say that out of the limited number of films I've seen from 2005 (only 22 so far), Crash is by far the best and will likely hold up. Others have defended it much better here.

But I agree completely with the Joan Allen comment. I'd knock Charlize Theron out and add Joan Allen for Best Actress. I'd probably toss out Judi Dench, but I haven't seen the movie and that wouldn't be fair.

Crash had so many great ingredients, but all those moments you mentioned Karima were so jammed together. I wanted to get to know a few of these people more rather than having everyone have a big scene, meaningful scene and then onto a another. The movie literally felt like a jumbled "Crash" to me. It never gelled together and, like opening speech from Cheadle, it felt stilted and unrealistic.

I'd rather see movies like the classic "Killer of Sheep" which delves into people's lives in a neo-realist style rather than a series of vignettes that are tied together by coincidence.

And Karima, you totally have me down. I thought that the girl being shot/not shot was corny. Maybe I just had a heart of stone that day when I saw it.

I actually saw it in L.A. and then got to go out to breakfast with some friends who live there who hated it as much as me. I wish Karima and Josiah could have been there too! Kemp and I would have had our hands full trying to defend our opinions.

Crash is the most contrived Hollywood take on race relations since THE THING WITH TWO HEADS (1972) (Tagline: They transplanted a white bigot's head on a soul brother's body!)

The odds of a two-headed man are slightly higher than the events in the Crash screenplay.

I went with the Crash formula for a while but then had to laugh. (Introduce character- turn the tables on that person, introduce another character, turn the tables on that person, rinse, repeat six or seven times....I just waited for the tables to be turned on each formulaic character....)

I live in North Minneapolis, and I wanted to like the film, but it is just silly.

But its heart is in the right place.
I admired the acting. Don Cheadle is amazing.

I was most disappointed that Maria Bello was not nominated for A History of Violence. That film also went off the tracks into farce but Bello remained a believable presence as the tone shifted.

Stephanie,

I ran across your reply to Crash comments now, so much later, and had to say thank you for your explanation and your friendliness. You sound like a nice person. Hey, I'm an intercultural relations trainer and community faculty professor, so of course I love Crash! But I appreciate that it felt jumbled to you; some in my classes, as well as myself, had to watch it a couple of times before it made more sense, and you don't have that luxury. So, mave on, Movie Maven!

Karima