TOUGH LOVE
5 years ago
January 31, 2003 | Michael Bronski remembered the tough-as-nails, gay journalist Sarah Pettit.
“I DON’T KNOW that I’d say I enjoyed working with Sarah Pettit. One of my first dealings with her was in 1993, when she was the arts editor for Out magazine. She called me on a Monday to ask for revisions on a piece I’d written. She needed the rewrite by Wednesday. I told her that I’d do my best but that my lover, Walta, was having brain surgery on Tuesday. A shunt was being placed in his cranium to drain fluid that was building up because of an AIDS-related infection...When I was finished, she paused and said, ‘Well, that excuse might work in Boston, but it won’t fly here in New York.’

“I love telling this story — which always shocks people — because it epitomizes Sarah’s complexity. While some might have found her remark insensitive, I took it as she intended: a form of humor that people — mostly gay men — use in an attempt to make the horror of AIDS emotionally manageable.” read full article

INDOCTRINATION STATION
10 years ago
January 30, 1998 | Lucky duck Mark Bazer scored a free ticket to the movie, Orientation, playing at the Church of Scientology.
“After a complete tour and a brief conversation with an L. Ron expert..., the Guy [film’s narrator] laid it on the line. ‘You stand at the threshold of your next trillion years. You can either live them in shivering darkness or in the light. The choice is up to you.’ Then we met some happy Scientologists. A plumber, a lawyer, an accountant and . . . an actor. It was Vinnie Barbarino himself. ‘What has Scientology helped me with?’ Travolta asked, grinning. ‘A better question is what it hasn't helped me with.’ Next up: Kirstie Alley. ‘Without Scientology, I can honestly say I would be dead.’ In other words, we have Scientology to thank for Veronica's Closet.” read full article

A.I. GORE
20 years ago
January 29, 1988 | In the weekly column “Spurious,” the Phoenix concluded that then-inconsequential presidential candidate Al Gore might be part cyborg.
“Beginning to end, the performance of Al Gore, who is acting more and more like the Manchurian candidate. Take it from me, when an extemporaneous speaker says that he has ‘10 reasons’ for supporting or opposing anything, and then ticks off all 10, he has either been uploaded with data or else he is just making everything up, a good bullshitter, and could keep on adding to the list all day long. In Gore’s case, however, there remains another disturbing possibility — that his wife, Tripper, or whatever her name is, is actually controlling him with the same high technology she uses to decipher rock lyrics. My vote is that he’s programmed. When Gephardt joked that Gore was acting ‘more like Al Haig than Al Gore,’ it took a full five seconds — a full ‘five Mississippis’ — for Gore to smile. The only explanation is that there was some system malfunction, or that he was on tape delay.”

LITTLE DEVIL
25 years ago
February 1, 1983 | Alfons Heck described what it was like growing up a member of the Hitler Youth.
“My days in the Hitler Youth were happy ones...: I was young, and I was becoming a fanatic. My grandparents, who raised me, were apolitical people whose farm was better off under the Nazis. My father...and my mother had moved away from the farm to run a family business...Once...when he visited and saw me preening in my uniform, he told me I looked like a little clown. Certainly he never had my blind faith in the Fuhrer. For my part, I thought his point of view was simplistic, out of touch with the truth about the Reich: after all, he had never been to high school...He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944...but was released...He lived to tell me what a fool I had been.” read full article

CONSUMER CULTURE
10 years ago
January 23, 1998 | Looking for culture on the newly named ‘Avenue of the Arts,’ Ellen Barry instead found corporations and flags.
“For those who failed to notice it, Huntington Avenue is no more. From Copley Square clear through Brigham Circle… Huntington is now ‘Avenue of the Arts,’ with the requisite flying pennants.

“Seems now, as in earlier renaissances, art sometimes disappears behind patronage. Artistic highlights of the street, as signified by colorful new banners, include a Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, and Taste of Asia. On the deep purple flags flipping in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Avenue celebrates artistically minded enterprises such as Forsyth Dental, the Wentworth Institute of Technology, and the YMCA, all members of the local Fenway Alliance which helped plan the project. Conspicuously flagless in this frenzy of art appreciation are the Museum School, the Huntington Theatre, and the New England Conservatory.”
 
LOVE STAIN
20 years ago
January 22, 1988 | Mimi Coucher had somehow developed an obsessive lust for the stain on Mikhail Gorbachev’s forehead.
“It was an innocent enough desire, at first; after all, I have long yearned to wreck Gary Hart’s hair or to catch a glimpse of the tiger on George Shultz’s behind, but none of these urges ever blossomed into obsession. But that thing on your head was different. I followed it. I followed it to Washington, to state dinners and cultural events… I watched it glow a little redder when discussions became heated. At first I wondered if it was an emotional barometer… Was it your third eye, a spiritual satellite dish? Or simply a rare flower blossoming on the tundra? Mr. Gorbachev, by the end of your historic visit, that thing on your head was branded in my heart.” Read the full piece here.

MOVIE MAGIC
25 years ago
January 25, 1983 | Owen Gleiberman pointed out the ways in which Gandhi director Richard Attenborough had softened the more disturbing bits of his film.
“...though Attenborough isn’t a calculating director, he has a sure sense of how the more fanatical elements in Gandhi’s personality could turn off the average moviegoer. Thus, we don’t find out until late in the movie, when Gandhi is already a sweet, doddering old man, that he gave up sex in his late 30s (his celibacy is made to seem a cute eccentricity). And we’re spared the steely, unyielding Gandhi — the one who could say of the raging religious conflicts that would tear his country into India and Pakistan, ‘I would rather that Hindus died without retaliation.’ The whole movie is softened. Attenborough has staged the bloodier episodes in India’s struggle for independence with a sort of tidy detachment...The 1919 Jallianawalla Bagh massacre, surely one of the most gruesome episodes in 20th-century history...cried out for a tumultuous treatment (perhaps helicopter views of the Indian citizens being mowed down), but instead Attenborough uses routine, swiveling-camera shots, and he keeps cutting away to nasty old Edward Fox ordering his men to fire.”

BURN UNIT
30 years ago
January 24, 1978 | Flora Haas found out what becomes of the Pentagon’s classified files after they are deemed disposable.
“...the Phoenix received a report that the Department of Defense was burning such documents — as a conservation measure that would reduce the expenditure for more conventional fuel. Half expecting a denial (after all, doesn’t the Pentagon deny practically everything?), we rang up Captain Bob Bowen, a Defense Department information officer.

“ ‘Yes,’ Bowen responded agreeably, that is indeed current practice. ‘Classified and unclassified documents from the Pentagon, as well as other government agencies in the DC area, are being fed into a central boiler plant, and the fuel is being used to heat the Pentagon.’

“What criteria, we asked, are used to decide that a particular document is ready for the furnace? Is it true that two tons of shredded documents equals one ton of coal? How many security guards are detailed to oversee the operation? For the answer to these and other questions, the agreeable Captain Bowen referred us to Public Affairs Officer Lieutenant Doug Gilles, who was rather less helpful about returning our calls.”

Some dude from marketing just handed us five pairs of tickets to see CLOVERFIELD on Thursday night (technically Friday morning) at Midnight, at the Regal Fenway 13. Details below on how to get yours.

We know Lost supergeeks, New York haters, and disaster-film afficionados (and doesn't that cover everyone?) have been gurgling over this thing for a minute. Competing studios are yanking their films out of its path like . . . well, like movie moms yanking their three-year-olds out of the way of a large, terribly destructive, whale-like force storming up Fifth Avenue.

About 99.99999-percent of this, though, is the old Hollywood game of "hide the monster," which we're both astonished and delighted to find, alive and well, in the 21st century. Here's one of our all-time favorite hide-the-monster flicks:

Point being, the shock value of hide-the-monster movies starts plummeting the moment after the first person walks out of the theater and starts text-messaging his friends what the monster looks like -- or snapping camera-phone flicks in the theater and photo-blogging them from their seats, which of course we really don't endorse but if you want to send us some, then whatevs, y'know -- so wouldn't you rather BE part of that first audience? The only audience to truly not have any clue what the monster looks like?

Of course you would.

Here's the deal: take a picture of yourself holding up a current edition of the Phoenix -- email it to onthedownload@phx.com. The first five emails we receive will get a pass (good for two people) to see CLOVERFIELD tomorrow night at midnight. You MUST be able to pick up the passes in person at the Phoenix offices (126 Brookline Ave, halfway between Fenway Park and the Fenway 13 Theater) no later than tomorrow at 5 pm. After that we feed them to the interns.

"Boom -- our show just shuts down," said "SNL" vet Amy Poehler. "It's just done. There is no backlog of scripts."

Game 5 of the ALCS was about an hour from start-time when Nick Hornby took the stage at the Devotion School in Brookline last night. The first question from the floor concerned, not surprisingly, Hornby's take on the current Red Sox series -- given that Hornby's Fever Pitch, a book about English soccer fanatics, had been magically turned into a Farrelly Bros film about Red Sox obsessives, which in turn was famously forced to undergo several last-second rewrites as the real-life Sox miraculously won their first World Series in 81 years.

Given that experience, you'd think Nick Hornby would understand that making even idle, humorous remarks about the Sox' prospects would not be taken lightly by the famously superstitious Fenway faithful. We're not sure if this rises to the level of the Curse of the Bambino, but it's damn well close. (Click above to see what we're talking about, and listen for the audience's audible gasp.) FOR GOD'S SAKE, MAN, THEY WERE DOWN 3-1. The Sox' subsequent drubbing of the Indians notwithstanding, we reserve the right to hold a book-burning on Yawkey Way should Our Boys fail to take two at home.

More from the Hornby appearance, including a reading from his fantastic new "young adult" novel Slam, coming over on Word Up on Thursday of next week. Thanks to Brookline Booksmith for hosting the reading.

It takes a lot of work to make Boston a place that hits above its weight-class in smartypants culture, but the Harvard Film Archive could soldier on singlehandedly if it had to. Monday was no exception when the HFA brought us “An Evening with Arnaud Desplechin.” Desplechin is one of the most important French filmmakers working today — a point that was made right off the bat by the evening's host, Jean-Michel Frodon, the managing editor of Cahiers du Cinema.

When Desplechin was introduced, with his thin face, high forehead, and rumpled hair, it was hard to ignore his resemblance to Roberto Begnini. Despite this, I felt no urge to punch him in the neck. The first film shown was Desplechin's 1991 debut, La Vie des Morts. It focuses on a rugby team's worth of college-aged cousins descending on a household where another cousin has just shot himself in the head. With the grieving nuclear family pushed to the side — you barely even clap eyes on Mom — La Vie des Morts demonstrates Desplechin's early understanding that there's more to a film than the storyline, that mundane life continues to surge around tiny islands of profundity.

After the film, the floor was opened to questions. Most audience Q&A's get seriously embarrassing, since people's questions generally boil down to:

1) "I noticed something and aren't I terribly clever?"

2) "You didn't make choices that the one artist I know anything about makes."

3) "I have a crazy agenda that has nothing to do with your work."

Of course, Cambridge is the epicenter of this sort of behavior, but Monday's crowd refrained from intellectual spaz-outs. Someone asked why so many first-time directors take on tragic topics. Desplechin countered that his film, "isn't about people who are suffering, but people who are witnesses of people who are suffering. They are on a kind of elegaic holiday."

The second film shown was 2004's Kings and Queen, which was the best movie I saw that year. The film follows the contrasting arcs of two ex-lovers — Ismaël, an unstable violist, and Nora, a successful art dealer. As the film progresses, we see that Ismaël's madness is of a piece with his integrity, and that Nora's self-possession is a cover for the fact that she's hollow inside, a facade of a person.

Or so I thought. One of the first questions hinged on the film's focal point, where Nora discovers a letter from her recently deceased father. While Dad was doting in life, post-mortem he rails against Nora as a bitter monster of his own making, whom he hates as much as he adores. It's a singular, devastating moment — one that turned my perceptions about the characters completely around.

But in answer to the question, Desplechin said, "I'm on Nora's side." He explained that he felt Nora's father was using this stormy alloy of hatred and love to brand her, to make her his own forever. Desplechin compared it to King Lear's "firing" of Cordelia, which Desplechin described as a meaningful moment that nonetheless remains beyond understanding.

Someone else in the crowd prodded him on the film's happy ending. Desplechin rejected that his ending was happy. He pointed out that his final scene was a man telling a ten year old boy that he won't adopt him, that although they love each other circumstances have made it impossible and they won't be able to see each other again. Desplechin also complained about how the need for unhappy endings has itself become a cliche, a holdover from Marxist diatribes against "incorrect" writing.

This confusion over motive and meaning might be taken as evidence that Desplechin's films are too murky for greatness, but I think that's a shallow view. His films are so overstuffed with compelling life and opaque intentions that they don't bear the blatant fingerprints of a human crafter. Rather, his films feel like they were stamped whole from whatever factory it was that gave us our own perplexing world.

―Chris Braiotta

Soon it will be upon us, the phenomenon will be finished as quickly as it began and there will be no more Harry Potter book release parties (or books themselves). The whole world seems obsessed with how the series will end, and there’s an intriguing story of someone who knows, yet refuses to tell.  To millions, it is perhaps one of the more coveted jobs imaginable, reading the Harry Potter books aloud to convert them to audiobooks, because you have advance access to the books months before they are released. Jim Dale, veteran Tony-winning actor, won’t say a word, believing people should discover the magic for themselves.

Dale has the right idea, because it’s all going to be over sooner than we think.  It’s the reason to be torn between hopping over to extremely-close-big-bookstore-impersonal-release-party at my local Barnes & Noble or Borders or Apparating out to Brookline for Brookline Booksmith’s Potterpalooza for what promises to be very-cool-Brookline-turns-to-Hogsmeade, complete with stores and restaurants selling and serving Potter-themed-items.  Every year the in-depth parties such as this seem more of a trek, but – sudden realization, folks – this is the last one! 

So after the final word of the final page, then what?  Every time you finish one of those books, there’s always the consolation as you put it down  -- and the person in the apartment below you has a now-broken ceiling from the weight of the tome– that you can be consumed by another momentous installation in a couple years. Now the substitution is the last two movies.  After such a supposedly big boon for both child and adult literacy, and its increasing popular caveat that some are afraid this is literacy’s downfall (here and here), the world needs to latch on to a new phenomenon, and there’s nothing like reigniting the fire of an older series than with a movie franchise.

Let the mania be reborn!  Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series surpasses even Potter in its propensity to engulf the reader, and the reader’s attachment to the characters, and tackles more gargantuan and complex issues than Potter – even taking a stab at organized religion, and makes you think in an engaging way that is more riveting than Potter for more sophisticated readers. Plus, the books are more portable.  The upcoming movie has just started filming, so for giant bears, evil witches and wizards, many animals that talk and Lyra -- a heroINE for a change! – start reading “The Golden Compass” and get excited for December 7.  (Second movie “The Subtle Knife” already scheduled to follow in 2009.)  With a cast including Nicole Kidman and Kevin Bacon, and a new child star who, if she's lucky, may achieve the fan-obsessed status of Radcliffe by the end of the series (just don't follow in Lindsay and Paris' footsteps!), let the Compassmania begin!

--Michelle Minkoff

LISTEN: Michael Moore at Cannes (mp3)

My day 2 of the Cannes Film Festival was all about notorious Michael Moore and the somewhat lighter project documentary on health care in the United States, Sicko. It was at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2004 that publicized Moore’s much-heralded signature documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, designed to influence the public’s opinion of presiding President Bush for the 2004 Presidential Election. Moore is the sexiest thing in Cannes, and has been ever since he became America’s No.1 Bush hater; every pound of him. Not to mention his red-carpet appearances sparking well-received applause from side-walk onlookers, Moore’s press conferences had the reporters elated with drool as well.

Yesterday, I got to sit in on one of the press conferences with Michael up front on stage being interviewed by respected Variety editor Peter Bart—who were both introduced by Santa Barbara Film Festival manager Roger Durling as “the two most dangerous men in Hollywood.” It must be so, because both were breaking open the professional shells of each reporter; inducing them to get out of their seats and cheer Moore on like in a political rally. Even though the conference was designated for Sicko, the conference became a political agenda speech; not just speaking on his behalf as the voice of the mainstream liberal party, but revving up criticism against the Bush Administration and public as he does at American colleges on tour. The interview was a full recap of what Sicko tried to convey about America’s putrid health care and criminal private health insurance firms, and how it all compares to Canada, France, and Sweden. Funny enough, Moore admitted at the conference that he researched Norway as well, but thought it was way too weird how good the health care is over there. “Norway is so crazy good, and so ridiculous, more ridiculous than France, they send you for a week to the Canary Islands at a spa. We got so [freaked] out by that, we just couldn’t put it in.” I don’t if this statement is valid, but the point is clear about how America’s domestic service compares to the rest of the world.

(Michael Moore, director of Sicko)

The most notable point of the conference was on Moore’s future in his role right now as mainstream’s most popular documentary director—documentaries being low on the totem pole for “coolness,” but Moore has revitalized public interest. It was apparent Moore was tired of taking all the punches when his supporters and fans stand aside speechless. “I’m like the one voice marching up against all of the lies perpetrated upon the American public—in this case, for health care. At some point, I hope I can catch a break here, because how much longer do I have to be doing this? I take the shit for it. I’m a human being too because I have to live through all this. I don’t enjoy it,” Moore explained. It was quite an endearing scene watching Moore show us his scars; for once Moore seemed more human than a political-filmmaking activist. After explaining the backlash he’s received from his work, the sea of reporters gave him a sympathetic applause. It was clear Moore was in a room of friends. Moore was asked later by one of the reporters how much longer he expects to distribute his work political documentaries, and Moore responded: “I kid around to the crew that I’m going to make just two more movies, and then maybe I’ll do something with the ice-capades or something, I don’t know, [crowd laughter]. I can’t not do what I’m doing, just like everyone else in this room,” Moore said. Everyone in the crowd silently screamed: “THANK GOD!” The buzz around the festival with the critics was that many hard-nosed reporters literally cried during the screening here--talk about fan support.

Jetlag can feel like a hangover sometimes, but once I finally landed in Cannes of Southern France, 6 hours ahead, I must’ve consumed a whole bottle of Absinthe intravenously. Peering out of my tiny window in my tiny plane barely gliding over a deep and massive Mediterranean Sea, Cannes, France appeared in the distance like Honolulu with the excessive commercial development. Fleets of gloating yachts owned by corporate sponsors squatted in front of the beached pavilion tents like fat kings. Peering into this dubious oasis didn’t endorse my cynical impressions of Hollywood imperialism; it gave new light to the worldwide fandom of film and also how insane it is to be a reporter in this place.

The 60^th Cannes Film Festival kicked off last week and has been generating publicity globally ever since. Several movies like Michael Moore’s Sicko and the Coen Brothers’ (Joel and Ethan) No Country for Old Men have been creating the biggest buzz to be the strongest indie contenders to be released. Since the Festival is crossing into a new decade, the guns had to be blazing with higher security, more expensive tickets, and big pyrotechnics in the evenings. Each country has its own tent for their associated journalists, including the U.S., to which the egoist title: The American Pavilion. Can’t you hear James Earl Jones roaring that for ambiance? Given it’s aging tenure, the Cannes Film Festival is now as big a cultural icon as the Oscars, and everyone covers it—even CNN, covering Jerry Seinfeld’s promotion event for Bee Movie with Jerry in his ridiculous bee outfit, swooping in like Howard Stern as Fart-Man. Every night is red-carpet night during this pop-culture brothel, which means the tourists and locals flock like sheep to stakeout good viewpoints from sidewalks during the day to hopefully later drool over celebrities driving by. Oddly enough, the celebrities seem to embrace the city and gawking fans because their European cars driving them to the Palais center for the big evening screening have transparent windows. There’s no window tinting in France, baby!

                                                               (Jerry Seinfeld, Bee Movie)

After dropping the luggage and absorbing the overwhelming ambiance of Cannes like a Television monitor, I recollected consciousness by sitting-in on a press conference for No Country for Old Men. Supporting Actors Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem with their writers and directors Ethan and Joel Coen represented the film at the conference. No Tommy Lee Jones unfortunately. To summarize first, No Country for Old Men is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel which includes an investigation on a finding of dead bodies along with heroin and money, and it is said that the movie itself plays a sensitive theme with the immigration reform going on today in politics. So along the beach with the endless mirage of tents and tourists, the conference took place in a very Andy Warhol-eque restaurant. I only say this because it was obvious the stylist was trying a little hard by hanging paper boulders along with glass spheres from the ceiling; so in turn, the restaurant is perfectly consistent in the vanity of the city.

I landed at a table where six other journalists in their mid-30s were already questioning Josh Brolin. Brolin, a relatively small-time actor on the rise was wearing shades (typical) with dark long hair, hunched over the table as he heralded the movie and played politics. However, the most interesting part of his interview was how he got the role for “Moss.” Apparently, when the film was still casting and Josh Brolin was finishing up his work with Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof, Tarantino helped Brolin rehearse his lines and taped a sound-set scene with Brolin just reading from the script. The Coen brothers received the tape and the deal was set. Even though Brolin spoke of himself in a very modest fashion, he’s clearly building up his confidence by inheriting principles on selecting movies—not doing it just for the money. “I’m tired of doing movies I don’t respect,” Brolin said. This is kind of uplifting since this is coming from a guy who has a history with Blockbuster junk like “Mimic” and “Hollow Man.” Brolin is a very endearing character because of how hard he works, how much he makes his work contribute to family, but also how humble he is. But then again, maybe I’m just buying too much into political language. The quote of the conversation was: “I will make more money on the stock market than I will with acting.”

The Coen Brothers followed Brolin, and it was curious how much I let my imagination depict these guys as Greek Gods because my admiration for some of their work, like The Big Lebowski and Fargo. They sat down looking skinny, and well, geeky, but also ying-yang. Ethan, the more prominent voice of the two, had short hair, and spoke with a very soft voice. In fact because both the brothers had little vocal presence and the chatter of the restaurant was rather dominating, I could hear practically nothing from across the table. Even though I got little out of the dialogue between the other journalists and the Coen brothers, I noticed another superficial anomaly; Joel, co-writer of The Big Lewbowski, had much more raggedy look and spoke very little behind his protective shades, and as he played around with his raw fish—he immediately reminded me of the character he created: The Dude.

Last but certainly not least was Javier Bardem who played “Chigurh” First thing that came to mind when I saw him was that he was someone else—Jeffrey Dean Morgan from Grey’s Anatomy, A.K.A “Denny”. I dumped my hypothesis when I heard Bardem’s Spanish accent. Bardem, for the most part, was probably the most casual and charismatic character at the entire conference. I enjoyed how he was the first to pull out a cigarette and bum a lighter from one of the reporters at my table. As for what he said, I was slightly unenthusiastic about since he used spiritual terms to describe his acting, like for example (not actual quote) “it came from within me.” Aside from the crack-pot hyperboles, Bardem gave full answers and seemed pretty interested in the interview. The quote of this conversation was a comment about the whole movie project from a racial standpoint: “I felt weird about being only foreigner in American movie with American staff in Texas.”

Being a reporter at the Cannes Film Festival isn’t a vacation, and in fact, most of the time you see reporters, they’re either logging away at their laptops in their tents or running to and from screenings and press conferences. Only at the end of the day, can the average Cannes reporter relax by scavenging on finger-food and downing free drinks at parties all around the city. It can seem like mayhem at times, grinding publicists for extra access and scheduling the events. Because of the class-dividing of reporter access based on the color of your press pass, hostility between lower access and higher access reporters brews at times. After eaves-dropping on the journalists at the conference table from the No Country for Old Men junket, a late-comer journalist from Variety squeezed in at our table to listen in on the Coen Brothers. Afterwards, when the Coen Brothers moved on, the Variety reporter decided to comment by saying: “I don’t usually come to these things.” The reporter left and the rest of the journalists gossiped about the condescending tone of the comment only after they noticed he had high-access color on his press pass. All in a day’s work as a teenage reporter peering into static industry of film.

To win tickets to documentaries screening as part of this year's Independent Film Festival Boston — including The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, The Paper, Time and Tide, Darius Goes West, and Row Hard No Excuses — send an email to contest@phx.com. First come, first serve, and tickets are limited. Read reviews of IFFB movies here. 

Photos: Meaghan Murray

Um . . . since when did St. Paddy's Day become an official Imperial holiday? It's weird enough that there were Stormtroopers marching in Southie last week . . . but it turns out we weren't the only ones with an infestation of Irish Star Wars fans. Thanks to Meaghan for the snaps. View More photos of Star Wars characters in Detroit and Boston St. Paddy's Day parades at Flickr.

For an industry traditionally unfair to females, Hollywood, some are saying, has turned out this year an unusually large  number of meaty women’s roles. Meaning that the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress races will be heated. Meaning that a lot of big name actresses and ingenues have revved up scene-stealing performances of women who either embody the Western ideal of womanhood, a self-sacrificing mother and wife, or its opposite, the malignant, witch-like termagant who spurns her natural place in order to pursue her own perverse ideas of independence, career ambition, sexual fulfillment, or short haircuts.

Why should these two groups be forced to compete against each other? So I propose another Oscar Category, The Hope Davis Award for Best Performance by an Actress in the Role of a Shrew.

And believe me, it’s been a strong year for shrews. It was tough narrowing the field to five. I considered Meryl Streep’s superbitch boss in “The Devil Wears Prada,” but since I only saw the film on an airplane with no sound (the headphones were broken) I decided that would not be fair. Similarly with Jennifer Connelly as the suffocating careerist wife in “Little Children,” since I fled the room after ten minutes of watching the DVD because of the godawful voice-over narrative. Diane Lane as the ballbusting, incredibly needy, wealthy  girlfriend implicated in George “Superman” Reeves death in “Hollywoodland?” Perhaps, but not exactly what I had in mind; she’s more the traditional role model taken to hideous extremes. Bonnie Mbuli as “Precious,” the nagging, ultimately treacherous wife of the innocent guy driven by the South African Police into terrorism? Well, the guy did cheat on her, and she was tortured, so her bad attitude is kind of understandable.

Anyway, here are my nominees for 2006’s Best shrews:

1. Annette Bening  in “Running With Scissors.” She’s the nightmare version of the empowered feminist with delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex, who, in the process of pursuing her manias and pretentions ruins her son’s life and even makes you sympathize with Alec Baldwin.

2. Judi Dench in “Notes on  a Scandal.” Not only has she rejected the normal female roles of wife and mother for a sterile career and a malignant spinsterhood, she has apparently dedicated her life to subverting other women who have achieved those goals with her Iago-like, predatory crypto-lesbianism.

3. Katie Holmes in “Thank You for Not Smoking.” I really admire the way this film, ostensibly a satire of amoral p.r. people, instead makes the journalist responsible for exposing the hero into the bad guy; of course, like all women in her profession, she’s basically a whore who seduces men to get her scoop.

4. Angelina Jolie in “The Good Shepherd.” As we all suspected, the reason why American foreign policy has been so screwed up for the last six  decades is because the people in charge -- ie, the CIA (or just “CIA” as those in the know put it) -- haven’t been getting any. And the ones to blame, of course, are their neurotic, sexless, ruthless and pitiful wives.

5. Thandie Newton in “Pursuit of Happyness.” Will Smith sure isn’t getting any happyness from this sourpuss.