Some of us have to settle for other Oscars.

Oscar nominations were announced this morning and they might as well have been delivered by Mitt Romney, considering the deafening yawns with which they’ve been greeted. Before you check out the list, I just want to say that the only nomination I was looking forward to was one that didn’t end up happening. Albert Brooks’ turn as a murderous gangster/movie producer in Drive warranted a Supporting Actor nod, though it didn’t receive one.

Fresh off the heels of Contagion, Steven Soderbergh delivers Haywire, a lean government spy story. What drives the film are its action sequences, driven by mixed martial arts star Gina Carano’s abilityto kick and jum and crush throats with her thighs. The film also reunites Soderbergh with writer Lem Dobbs, responsible for penning one of the director’s best films, The Limey. Like The Limey, Haywire is a bare-bones genre flick that depends on its ability to play with convention in a way that’s more reminiscent of Shoot the Piano Player than Pulp Fiction.

What I most admire about this mode of Soderbergh’s filmmaking is its approach to actors and their performances. The silver screen is a place where people best succeed when they play themselves: when Humphrey Bogart walks across a room, Anna Karina winks at the camera, or Bruce Willis creeps through an elevator shaft. Much the same is true of Carano: she’s not an actress, and even if she were, I doubt she would be a great one. Yet Soderbergh boiled down her performance to a competent and functional show that barely seems like a performance at all. Combined with the understated presence of veterans like Bill Paxton and Michael Douglas, the cast becomes a collection of compelling characters with a refreshing lack of prescribed depth.

Haywire also succeeds as a romp of the sexes, and I took particular delight in watching Carano annihilate a host of slimy male adversaries. Her fight with Michael Fassbender is especially funny; he delivers line familiar to women everywhere, “You’re out of control!” as she pummels him into submission. In our intertextual media universe, it’s all too possible that this is Fassbender’s sex-addict from Shame really getting some serious introspection handed to him. Haywire isn’t offering the feel-good empowerment delivered by the Kill Bill movies or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where sexuality appears as a uniquely feminine form of empowerment that’s appreciated by men and only tested when it goes head to head with other women. Whereas an overwritten character would have easily fallen into similar tired techniques, it is precisely the character’s lack of development and Carano’s subdued performance that make Mallory Kane a badass female unencumbered by an exhausting need for sympathy.

For all that’s made of the action, though, the film is more interested in unraveling mystery than the drama of a final showdown. Dobbs and Soderbergh know that by the time they’ve showed every card up their sleeves and Carano has unwrapped all the layers of her own betrayal, there will be no need for a final confrontation. The film ends just before Carano delivers her last dose of justice. Conventionally, it’s an unsatisfying ending. But not nearly as unsatisfying as it would have been to sit through a boring, drawn out finale.

I recently had the profound pleasure of spending a quiet evening at the normally wild and crazy Acme studios in Brooklyn with my dearest friend Rachel Trachtenburg, her mother Tina, and Acme’s brigadier general, Shawn Patrick. After a dinner and a movie of nachos and Sidney Lumet’s Network (try this as soon as you can), I was tasked with sharing a few of my favorite music videos. Most, unsurprisingly, were received well — Rihanna’s Spike Lee/Keith Herring/Warhol/Basquiat send-up Rude Boy and Beyonce as bored/scorned housewife/Marilyn Monroe in Why Don’t You Love Me? are both incredibly fun and really smart cultural homage — but my very favorite video of the year, Robyn’s pitch-perfect (as far as I’m concerned) Call Your Girlfriend, was roundly rejected.

I’m not surprised the Trachtenburgs didn’t like it: in every incarnation for as long as they’ve existed, they’ve embodied a sort of anti-pop sensibility. Their music is smart, sophisticated, daring and different. One of the reasons I jumped to make Dumb Dumbs – Greg Hanson’s truly weird debut video for Rachel’s band, SUPERCUTE! — is the exhilaration of doing something really, profoundly different. Greg and the Trachtenburgs couldn’t be ‘normal’ if they tried — and they don’t. For people with such an eye and ear for the messy, complicated, frenetic, unexpected, and bizarre, what interest could Robyn’s clean, simple, catchy, perfectly engineered product hold?* Still, I feel the need to defend Robyn against the accusation that every character in Dumb Dumbs would surely level at her: namely that she’s just more of the same, or worse, boring.

Call Your Girlfriend is perhaps the millionth example of the single-shot music video, a reaction to the frenzied editing of the late MTV era that relies on the theatrical treatment of time to render whatever complicated spectacle — be it Beyonce’s impossible hip thrusts or a marching band hidden in a field — more impressive by virtue of its unfolding uninterrupted, the video acting as proof by photographic documentation. But Call Your Girlfriend doesn’t utilize the single-shot for the normal spectacular: Robyn dances alone in an empty warehouse towards a (very) handheld camera with only sporadic club lights as support. Robyn’s dancing is somehow simultaneously silly and incredibly alluring: she don’t give a fuck. And there in lies the video’s genius: Robyn’s comfort in front of the camera, and apparent disregard for what you may think of her dance moves, lends the video an extraordinary intimacy. With no one else in the space, it’s clear: she’s dancing for you.

And that’s it. What I love about Call Your Girlfriend (both the song and the video) is what I love about all good pop, especially classic Hollywood: the incredible subtlety and craft needed for the form to completely disappear into the content. Every decision in Call Your Girlfriend — the imperfect motion of the camera, the lack of editing and backup dancers, the crazy lights — serves to bring Robyn’s charisma and energy to the fore. It’s a visceral experience, and it works.

And then there are the little touches — the delayed reveal of Robyn’s shoes, the moment (at 1:20) when Robyn dips backwards and the camera moves sympathetically — that betray how well-conceived and carefully executed the video really is. At the end of the video, there’s a moment of dead space between the song ending and Robyn clearing the frame where she steps up and, suddenly in almost alarming proximity, takes a deep breath, wipes her nose, and smiles. It’s much like the ending of Single Ladies – in which we watch Beyonce catch her breath before breaking into a laugh — and it serves the same purpose: to remind us that the performer we’ve just watched is actually human. Contrary to most indications, Beyonce does need to catch her breath, and though Robyn’s dancing isn’t the same sort of physical feat, it’s still an act of performing bravado, and the disarming human contact at the end makes it clear that she enjoyed it as much as you did.

The principle characteristic Robyn embodies in the video is, of course, grace; an easy, tossed-off gracefulness that says we just used the first take, I just threw these clothes on, and I didn’t wash my hair this morning. It’s called cool, and it’s at the core of all good pop: it’s both of Bieber’s haircuts, Kanye’s backpack, and Justin Timberlake’s dick in a box. It’s Robert Downey Jr.’s acting career. It’s the photos of Obama in college, smoking a cigar. And it takes a number of the smartest artists and marketers in the world to keep it up, to keep it current, to reinvent it for every generation. For every JT there are a million stale Drakes and Maroon 5s.

All of this is not to belittle the Trachtenburgs’ talent. It takes a completely different sensibility to color effortlessly inside the lines than to utterly disregard them, and I am in constant awe of the courage and aplomb it takes to be truly different. But there is something pretty remarkable, too — and pretty unexpected — about stripping everything down, stepping up, and making everyone want to be your girlfriend, in the world of cool.

*Although they appreciated Robyn’s taste in clothing, of course.

Yeah, we know.  We’re late with the list again. But 2011 had a remarkable run in cinema, and this year’s list truly runs through nearly the entire spectrum.

Something to keep in mind:  none of the individual lists are the same. Films listed as number one by some people weren’t even seen by others. But, indeed, this is part of the film going experience and part of why the list is formulated as it has been. This is a snapshot, a look inside what different people are interested in, and what they thought of what they have viewed.

Below you’ll find the official Company list, followed by all the individual lists, and the scoring and explanation of how the list was created.

1.  Beginners

2.  Melancholia 

3.  Tree of Life 

4.  Midnight in Paris 

5.  Hugo

6.  Meek’s Cutoff

7.  Weekend

8.  Moneyball

9.  Bill Cunningham New York

10.  Drive

*          *          *

Giampaolo
Mysteries of Lisbon
Sleepless Nights Stories
The Turin Horse
Melancholia
The Future
Meek’s Cutoff
Contagion
Hugo
Le Havre
Bridesmaids

Jake
Tree of Life
Melancholia
Moneyball
Poetry
Le Quattro Volte
Hugo
Weekend
The Descendants
The Arbor
Take Shelter

M. Pitkoff
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Too Big to Fail
The Trip
George Harrison: Living in the Material World
The Love We Make
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
The Black Power Mixtape (1967-1975)
Moneyball
Zookeeper

Liz
Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest
Sleeping Beauty
Tree of Life
Beginners
Weekend
Heartbeats
Page One
Bill Cunningham New York
Bridesmaids
Conan O’Brien: Don’t Stop

Brian
Le Quattro Volte
Beginners
Tree of Life
Shame
Midnight in Paris
The Trip
I Saw the Devil
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Moneyball

M. Paley
Beginners
Melancholia
Drive
Meek’s Cutoff
Into the Abyss
Tree of Life
Poetry
Weekend
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
The Artist

Adam
Beginners
Drive
Tree of Life
Melancholia
Shame
Midnight in Paris
Bill Cunningham New York
The Artist
Meek’s Cutoff
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Peter
The Ides of March
Win/Win
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Midnight in Paris
Crazy, Stupid, Love
Bill Cunningham New York
Melancholia
Super 8
Bad Teacher
X-Men: First Class

The list was created through a compilation of frequency and then weighted through adding their rankings and dividing the sum by the frequency. The films in four lists or more have their averages equally weighted with one another.

Beginners – 4  ( 1, 1, 2, 4 ) // 2

Melancholia – 4  ( 2, 2, 4, 4 ) // 3

Tree of Life – 5  ( 1, 3, 3, 3, 6 ) // 3.2

Midnight in Paris – 4  ( 2, 4, 5, 6)  // 4.25

Hugo – 3  ( 1, 6, 8 ) // 5

Meek’s Cutoff – 3  ( 4, 6, 9 ) // 6.3

Weekend – 3  ( 5, 7, 8 ) // 6.6

Bill Cunningham New York – 3  ( 6, 7, 8 ) // 7

Moneyball – 3  ( 3, 9, 10 ) // 7.3

Drive – 2  ( 2, 3 ) // 2.5

Le Quattro Volte – 2  ( 1, 5 ) // 3

Beats Rhymes & Life : The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest – 2  ( 1, 7 ) // 4

Shame – 2  ( 4, 5 ) // 4.5

The Trip – 2  ( 4, 6 ) // 5

Poetry – 2  ( 4, 7 ) // 5.5

The Artist – 2  ( 8, 10 ) // 9

Bridesmaids – 2  ( 9, 10 ) // 9.5

I do everything in my power to prepare for a film, but at the end of the day I’ve shot what I’ve shot and I’ve cut what I’ve cut and it’s out of my hands. This is not to shirk responsibility — more to marvel at the moment when all of your time and thought leave your grasp and become something entirely new, all on its own.

Instead of high-tailing it to P-town or sunning ourselves out on the greenway, Emma and I spent our Sunday afternoon hovering over a heavy pot of sticky, viscous, brown liquid goodness. We let it boil (but only just barely), stirred the sediment (with a sanitized spoon) and we cooled the wort (in the coolest of ice-baths).

And after three hours of bubbling and timing and sanitizing and worrying and reassuring, we added the yeast, shut the lid and put the bucket in the corner. We have done all that we can do, now it’s up to the ingredients to mix and ferment and clarify into our first batch of Belgian Amber Ale. We hope. And it’s this exact out-of-control feeling — brewing it all up, breath held back — that’s a critical part of my creative process.

Production for I hope you find what you came here to see begins this Saturday. Glasses raised.

Describe the emotions that your own death arouses in you. Write down, or think carefully about, what you think will happen to you when you die, when you are physically dead. Be as specific as possible.

Done? Good.

Now that you have completed this task, I predict that you will have a stronger opinion on whatever follows in this article. Or, really, on any article. In all likelihood, because of this reminder of your mortality, you will be more passionate about your take on Britney Spears not wearing shoes into a public bathroom, global warming, or the successful first week of Transformers 3 (180 million).

This is what is called “mortality salience,” the polarizing effect of the subliminal awareness of mortality. It has been tested scientifically, and was exemplified by the extreme public embrace of George W. Bush, a charismatic, value-driven leader, after we observed, nationally, people diving off buildings to their death on 9/11. We felt for the victims and the victims’ families, but, more importantly, we were reminded vividly that each of us, personally, are going to die. Except for Charlie Sheen.

I will be thinking about death all summer, so I apologize, in advance, for moody diatribes against the new films Captain America, Cowboys and Aliens, the Zookeeper and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. No, it is not clinical depression I am going through. I am, rather, designing viral videos to promote my father’s new book on death, out next year. It is a science book, and there is a distinct lack of comforting fiction in it. In other words, he is not guiding you on how to approach death or offering salvation as a condolence. He is describing, quite nakedly, our society’s limited understanding of the scientific mechanics of death and the trouble this gets us into, most importantly, in terms of organ donation.

It seems that most of the public think organs are taken from dead people. “I’ll be dead,” people say, filling out their organ donation cards, “So what do I care?” If only this were true, it would be a nice, appropriate sentiment. Why shouldn’t my organs, now useless to me, expand someone else’s life? The problem is that organs cannot – let me repeat this, cannot – be taken from dead people.

…unless you change the medical definition of death, as so happened in 1968, when a collection of Harvard medical specialists met to change the official criteria for death. Finally, death was scientifically clarified – it was now, officially, “a loss of personhood,” which for the Harvard committee meant brain death.

Believe it or not, even “braindead” does not mean your brain is exactly dead. It means that your brainstem isn’t working, admittedly a vital, essential part of your body, basically the on-off switch, which is responsible for such things as ‘wakefulness.’ The cerebral cortex, which contains consciousness and pain, may still be in tall order. So, being braindead simply doesn’t rule out pain (or EXTREME PAIN) during organ removal. To add insult to injury, the medical establishment fails to provide anesthetic to organ donors, because, well, that’d be admitting you weren’t quite dead (and it also potentially harms the organs). Furthermore, there have been cases of people declared dead, and then cleared for organ donation, who have then come back to life and fully recovered. Very few, but a single exception nullifies Harvard’s definition, at least from a scientific perspective.

This is an inconvenient truth. Nobody wants organ donation to be flawed. It’s wonderful to be able to save people in ways that before were impossible. However, as it stands, it just isn’t honest.

I’d like my father’s book to succeed in the market, obviously, as I think it contains information heretofore unknown to most of the public. Besides organ donation, it covers the history of scientific death, non-western death, near death experiences, PVS, and, maybe unavoidably, my father’s own nihilism. It’s presented in an amazingly readable way, like a  Malcolm Gladwell book but with more substantive scientific backing (sorry Gladwell…) It’s also surprisingly funny, in a dark way. The anecdotes are well picked, unpretentious and cutting, and he describes the unique situation of having to come face to face with death, daily, for ten years. Pantheon, the publisher, has selected it as one of the books it’s going to push heavily at the beginning of next year. My father’s last book, on non-western math and science, was not a huge commercial success but it did become a New York Times notable book of the year, so odds are this one will be somewhat critically embraced as well.

But how do you sell a book that is so fundamentally grim? Do you embrace and parody the bleakness (as I am naturally inclined to do) or do you cover it up and spin it in a more digestible way? Or maybe you do the book complete justice, in documentary style a la Errol Morris?

These issues have been bouncing around as I brainstorm marketing ideas, as well as my own death, which increasingly doesn’t freak me out as much as most. My dad and I are, for now, hedging our bets and creating a bunch of different short viral ads, some interview-style, some more imagistic, and some lampooning my father (one features him, after not being able to get through to the reading public, going on a book tour and lecturing to farm animals). It’s a fun project and it allows for a lot of experimentation as we head into unfamiliar territory for both of us. We don’t know what will come out of it. It’s a lot like life, really. Maybe the viral videos will explode and garner interest, maybe they’ll obscure the point, or maybe our attempts are entirely in vain, and there is no way to get people to read this book.

5 books and 25+ years in as a freelance science writer, my father is pretty eager, I think, to have this one be a big seller. Also, he realizes he’s going to die, and, odds are, sooner rather than later. I called him the other day to tell him the final chapter was maybe a little too bleak. I asked, maybe there was an honest way to lighten the last part up without compromising the book? “Look, I’ll do it anything,” he confessed, “If it helps the book, I’ll tell people at the end that they’re not really going to die, after all.”

Earlier today, Paul passed me an article by Bill Simmons (for ESPN’s grantland.com) concerning Hollywood, entitled “The Movie Star.” Now, Simmons might be the most famous contemporary sportswriter – he certainly is in Boston – but (to my knowledge) he is not also a film industry expert. But I do very much like his writing, and I’ll read anything recommended to me by Paul. Still, I wasn’t immediately sold when I read this paragraph early on:

Any sports fan knows he or she will be in situations (at a wedding, at a bar, at work, wherever) in which they’ll get into friendly arguments about things like “The Lakers should trade everyone but Kobe for Dwight Howard” and [you'll] sound like a fool if you aren’t prepared. That’s the real reason we suffer through talking-head shows, sports radio and all the crap online — not just because we’re addicted to being sports fans, but because we’re trying to learn material to use later for our own benefit. Being a movie fan doesn’t work that way.

Spoken like a sportswriter, no? I, surrounded by movie buffs, constantly read up on Hollywood and the film industry from as many perspectives as I can (in large part to avoid sounding like an idiot). Isn’t that why, after all, I was reading this article? But the larger point made was actually a good one: competitive sports, particularly with today’s complex (bordering on ridiculous) analysis, offer pretty good answers to questions of comparative success, or whether someone’s work is improving or declining, or which players are most essential to a successful outcome. Hollywood – particularly because many would argue that good and successful (using box-office return as the barometer) aren’t one in the same – offers much more spin and far fewer answers.

But here’s where Simmons got me:

I believe there are 24 male movie stars right now, a funny number since that takes the NBA All-Star analogy full circle. But here’s the list: Smith and Leo; Depp and Cruise; Clooney, Damon and Pitt; Downey and Bale; Hanks and Denzel; Stiller and Sandler; Crowe and Bridges; Carell, Rogen, Ferrell and Galifianakis; Wahlberg and Affleck; Gyllenhall (it kills me to put him on here, but there’s just no way to avoid it); Justin Timberlake (who became a movie star simply by being so famous that he brainwashed us); and amazingly, Kevin James. All of them can open any movie in their wheelhouse that’s half-decent; if it’s a well-reviewed movie, even better.

Suddenly, I find myself fascinated; not just by the list itself (which, to my mind, is pretty unassailable) but to the pairings. Clooney, Damon and Pitt. Downey and Bale. Wahlberg and Affleck. Simmons hasn’t just compiled a list of movie stars, he’s classified each of them by type, almost as if, continuing his basketball metaphor, he were splitting them up into positions. The clarity, the effectiveness of it is striking – because it’s not a reflection on their movies (Smith and Leo, as Simmons explains very well a bit later in the article, make antithetical career choices) as much as how the public sees them. Wahlberg and Affleck have rebranded themselves as working class white (as has Boston, their touchstone) while Damon has joined the classy, old-Hollywood throwback actors (as Soderbergh announced so accurately in the Oceans’ series). Again, it isn’t about the movies they make (did Pitt or Clooney ever do an action series like Bourne?) as much as who they sit with in the lunchroom.

Too astute. Simmons moves on to analyzing Will Smith – the last movie star, they say – and his uncanny success.

True story: When Smith was trapped on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air set in the early-’90s, dreaming of starring in movies instead of selling Alfonso Ribiero’s jokes, Smith and his manager, James Lassiter, studied a list of the top-10 grossing films ever. Here’s what Smith told Time Magazine in 2007: “We looked at (the list) and said, O.K., what are the patterns? We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”

It’s not quite depressing, per se, because it’s not at all surprising. It will, I can solemnly swear, have no bearing on what I decide to direct (although, if I’m smart, it may have some bearing on what I decide to produce) but I think it a must read, if only to arm yourself for the next conversation you have (at a wedding, a bar, at work, wherever) about Hollywood – because, about this, Simmons is wrong: film people DO think less of you if you can’t talk about this stuff.

Read it all here.

I’m always surprised at what hits the web zeitgeist, and what doesn’t. Who thought a 13 year old’s curiously bad youtube video would amass 160 million views? And who could’ve predicted she would transcend youtube to outsell most everyone else on iTunes? And is the home video “Charlie bit my finger” that funny?

Then, on the other hand, there’s this under-appreciated gem. The concept is great: a 5 year old dictates comics to his 29 year old graphic illustrator brother, who makes them come to life on the page. It is funnier than you’d think.

In any music video, the filmed piece needs to compliment the established audio track. The vigorous and spirited song, which is filled with intense lyrical intonation, clashes with the visually emotionless, slow-paced video performance. In most instances, a proper video requires an artist who acts as an engaging storyteller. In this case, we have artists who are removed from their audience, as well as their environment (only Nicki Minaj’s performance seems properly paired). Why, considering the confrontational and direct nature of the song, do I feel Kanye is only comfortable scratching the surface of the idea here? What could he be hiding?

What do you think? Check it out here!