EXTREMELY EARLY OSCAR PREDICTIONS

I’ve seen the best film of the year, and it’s Martin Scorcese’s “The Departed.” But since there’s still four other Best Picture slots to fill, the question becomes, “Which lucky movies will get to come in second for the title of 2006’s best projected entertainment?”

Now of course, the Oscar prognosticating started long before I wrote this post. However, I have an angle that I wish to explore, and no other web-based publication I’ve perused has harped on it yet. So here it is: Oscar-wise, 2006 will be remembered as The Year of the Woman.

Okay, what do I mean by that? It seems that every year, the majority of Best Picture nods can be categorized by a particular theme, some common quality that sets the quintet of would-be Oscar champions apart from the previous five. For example, 2005 might be recalled as The Year of the Socially-Conscious Movie, what with “Brokeback Mountain,” “Munich,” “Goodnight and Good Luck,” and “Crash” taking on Really Big and Important Subjects.

Meanwhile, I think of 2004 as The Year of the Biopic, represented by Best Picture nominees “The Aviator,” “Ray,” and “Finding Neverland.” From what I’ve heard, “Finding Neverland” may have been as accurate an account of J. M. Barrie’s life as “Shakespeare in Love” was for its own titular personage, but let’s not forget, 2004 also featured nominations in various categories for “Kinsey” and “Hotel Rwanda.”

How should we label 2003? How about The Year of the Big Sweeping Epic? After all, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” and “Seabiscuit” were among the five competing in Oscar night’s main event. Call me a pragmatist, but I can only assume that these three films had been nominated because they were Big Sweeping Epics. I back that assessment by reminding everyone that they combined for zero acting nominations.

2002 could be called The Year of Miramax, since the studio produced four out of the five Best Picture nominees. The year before, 2001, was no Year of the Space Odyssey, but rather, Tripping Down a Hole of a Different Kind, what with “The Fellowship of the Ring,” “Moulin Rouge!” and John Forbes Nash’s unstable brain in “A Beautiful Mind” representing just a few of the many high-profile, fantastical worlds that took the viewer someplace that wasn’t quite reality.

Having said all that, I’m already pigeonholing this as The Year of the Woman, since just about every movie with terrific word-of-mouth features challenging roles for actresses. For example, there is Stephen Frears’ “The Queen,” starring Helen Mirren as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, coping publicly and privately with the death of Princess Diana.

On the other hand, Todd Field’s sophomore effort “Little Children” has drawn rave reviews for Kate Winslet, who plays a bored housewife. The premise – married couples cheat on each other in suburbia – may have drawn comparisons to “American Beauty,” but hey, that film won a truckload of Oscars.

Speaking of not forgetting, let’s not overlook the big American studios, which can also make movies about strong, inspiring female characters. This fall, DreamWorks has the musical “Dreamgirls” on-deck to score points with the American Idol crowd. I know next-to-nothing about it, except that it’s based on a Broadway musical set in the 1960’s, and revolves around a trio of black soul singers akin to The Supremes. As far as pedigree, “Dreamgirls” has a respected director in Bill Condon, who won a screenplay Oscar for “Gods and Monsters” and adapted the 2002 Best Picture winner “Chicago.” He was also nominated for Best Screenplay for his last film “Kinsey.”

So including “The Departed,” that makes four Best Picture nominees. What about the fifth? I have yet to hear raves for Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” while NBC film critic Jeffrey Lyons urged a bunch of us journalists to check out Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel,” which co-stars Cate Blanchett. But I’m thinking of going out on a limb, and predicting that the fifth Best Picture nomination will go to Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver.” It reportedly has Penelope Cruz in the performance of a lifetime. Also, Almodovar’s films won Best Foreign Language Picture twice in the last seven years, and his “Talk To Her” nabbed the 2002 Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

When it comes to foreign filmmakers with critical recognition on these shores, it’s seems reasonable to side with either Pedro or Ang Lee.

To recap, Phil X’s Extremely Early Oscar Predictions for 2006 are (alphabetically):

“The Departed”

“Dreamgirls”

“Little Children”

“The Queen”

“Volver”

Of course, that’s if “Jackass 2” doesn’t sweep the early critics’ prizes.

IMPRESSIONS OF MOVIES

Seeing a flick in New York City has gotten way too expensive, especially when you factor in the cost of riding the subway to and from the theater. Still, if you go early enough in the day, and fit in more than one, it actually balances out. Last Saturday, for example, I took in a double feature comprised of “The Departed” and “A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints” at the 42^nd St. AMC.

“The Departed” alone would have made the trip. Martin Scorcese’s latest opus is crass, violent, occasionally over-the-top, and exceptionally awesome. It’s a return to the genre that made the director so popular to begin with: the mob flick. But it’s also a remake of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s 2002 “Infernal Affairs,” that rare Hong Kong flick that actually got a theatrical life on these shores.

Despite a shared basic plotline – moles for the police and mafia infiltrate the other’s organizations, attempt to smoke out the other, and avoid detection themselves – Scorcese manages to craft what feels like a totally original movie. How does one explain this? It can’t just be the transplanting of action from Hong Kong to Boston, or the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon for Tony Leung and Andy Lau, respectively.

If I had to guess, I’d say that culture plays a part in the differences. “Infernal Affairs,” like a lot of Hong Kong cinema, emphasized the action and suspense scenes, while downplaying the drama. “The Departed,” meanwhile, goes the totally opposite route. Like “Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas,” and other definitive Scorcese films, there is bloodletting and kill-shots galore, but these merely punctuate overall character development.

There’s also a discernible difference in acting styles between this film and its Eastern counterpart. Whereas the latter emphasized stoicism – Tony Leung never went hog wild except for dramatic effect – the colorful array of heroes and villains in “The Departed” frequently wear their passion on their sleeves. As a result, there’s a lot of ribald, really inappropriate behavior and dialogue, including a howler that involves cranberry juice and women’s biological functions.

With “The Departed,” Scorcese really returns to the same dingy depths as “Goodfellas,” and one gets the feeling that he’s at his most comfortable there. But equally at home during this excursion into the underbelly is Jack Nicholson as king snake Frank Costello, a hedonist so far gone that his motivations stem from sheer boredom. A crook with all the coke and hookers he’ll ever need, Costello is a walking example of that line from “Heat:” For him, “the action is the juice.”

Speaking of juice, there was also a lot of high-energy acting in “A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints,” the debut feature of Astoria native Dito Montiel. We clearly get the impression that his childhood was pretty bad, featuring a father who was too busy trying to be a man to actually be his dad.

There’s no shortage of macho posturing and obnoxious behavior in Montiel’s memoirs. Had I been watching “A Guide…” at home, I might have actually turned off the DVD player and gone to read a book. But I’m glad I stuck with it, because the acting by Robert Downey, Jr., who gets a lot of screen time later on as the director’s grown-up counterpart, is terrific. The movie may not end on the most satisfactory note, but you can’t make peace with the past without first returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak. This film is a fine chronicle of that important, initial step.

WHAT IS WISDOM THAT DOES NOT PROFITEROLE THE WISE?

I’m going to tell you a story that still seems unbelievable, as if it were the product of a fevered dream rather than cold, hard reality.

Make that creamy, sugary reality.

Okay, here’s what happened: I was walking down Leonard St. on my way to the supermarket last night. As I crossed Devoe St., I suddenly became aware of Italian music playing in the background, and strands of soft, white light bulbs strewn from one end of the street to the other.

Since neither K. nor I are Italian, but our neighborhood largely is, I assumed that I had stumbled across some sort of religious or cultural festival. Being a reporter, and having my camera concealed in my trusty backpack, I decided to walk over to the mass of white tents, ask a few questions, take pictures, and find out what was going on.

But little did I realize that I had stepped into a parallel universe, where cake flowed as liberally
as water, albeit with much more variety.

I’m not being hyperbolic, you disbelievers. The local pastry shop, Fortunato Brothers., happened to be celebrating its 30^th Anniversary on Monday. In commemoration of that historic day – which is no mean feat in our age of the revolving business – they threw a party on the adjacent block, with tables covering just about every spare inch of asphalt.

And on each table sat an assortment of delectable treats including tiramisu, chocolate mousse, babarum, and more. My Italian may not have been fluent enough for me to decipher exactly what “zupper ingles” means, but luckily, the human palate is a great equalizer of languages. One bite, followed by a smile, translates into easily-understood happiness no matter what culture you come from.

It almost matched the happiness I felt when I found out that everything - and I mean everything - was free.

That's right, we’re talking all-you-can-eat pastry at absolutely no charge. I indulged until I could indulge myself no more, then I walked to the next table for yet another serving. Thank the heavens that I am a spindly man, or last night could have been the end of me. As it was, I stumbled home clutching my stomach in my hands, half-expecting that the tiramisu in my arteries would cut off blood flow at any moment, instigating a fateful heart attack. I felt the seconds of my life ticking away, like sand falling through the neck of an hourglass, like chocolate shavings lightly dropping from the mouth of someone haphazardly eating black forest cake.

But over-consumption did not claim my life, and after several hours of sitting on the couch without eating, my body managed to absorb all that sugar and fat. Perhaps the gods also decided to spare my life since I had been carrying several plate-loads home for K., who was out until late. Either way, I made it through to morning, and as I type away at my computer, pausing only to munch on a comparatively healthy snack – an apple – the faint taste of decadence still lingers in my mouth.

With only those trace memories to remind me of last night’s excursion – oh, and some profiterole with lemon that K. didn’t take to work – it seems too good to have been true. Could I have imagined the whole thing?

Even if I did, however, I suppose that doesn’t change the essential truths that one night in cake-land revealed: That indeed, there can be too much of a good thing; that babarum, despite not tasting like liquor, does in fact contain alcohol; and that the love you make equals the love you take, judging by all the loyal customers who gathered in the street during a calm evening, bearing 30 years of fond memories.