..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Ray Pride
..Patricia Vidal

THE OSCARS OF DEATH!!!

“Death is in… Death is in…” So singeth Roy Scheider’s Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse’s autobiographical masterpiece All That Jazz.

It suddenly struck me as I was watching 21 Grams a second time. Sean Penn’s performance in the film is actually, it seems to me, a touch better than his work in Mystic River. But Mystic feels more like a lead and in 21 Grams he feels secondary to Benicio. I can’t really explain it since, in logical terms, he is the lead in 21 Grams and more a part of an ensemble in Mystic River.

Well, actually… both are movies about triads. And then it hit me… both are also movies about Penn’s character obsessing on someone else’s premature death, causing him to take actions that he may regret! Hmmm… two performances from one of our greatest working actors, two very different characters, but very much the same themes of power and emotional impotence. (I’ve moved off of my one nomination attitude. He should be nominated for both and Focus & WB should agree soon about who chases Lead and who chases Supporting.)

Then it occurred to me… House of Sand & Fog lives in a similar emotional place as do these two films. But, more to the point of my headline, it’s a major death movie!

I personally think The Human Stain is already dead as a movie. But I know for sure that there is death in the movie.

A few nights back I saw Veronica Guerin again… you know, the drama about the dead journalist.

Another famously dead woman, Sylvia Plath, is brought to life… and death… by Gwyneth Paltrow, with whom Focus Features is chasing an Oscar nod.

And then there is the ultimate in true death Oscar-chasing stories this side of the Jewish Holocaust, The Alamo. This may be a spoiler for some of you… I can only hope you got yourself some good schoolbook learnin’… but I believe the death toll is 189.

Cold Mountain starts with Jude Law’s Civil War soldier near death before he starts the long walk home to the farm of Nicole Kidman’s dead father.

The death of a child hovers over the immigrant family of In America. The Missing is about a family that is trying to track down a kidnapped daughter, who may be alive or dead. Even Finding Nemo leads with a dead mother and siblings.

Comedies aren’t free from death either. Big Fish’s modern narrative is built around a guy visiting his estranged father, who is allegedly dying, to find out what was true and what was just a big fish tale. Calendar Girls is keyed on the death of Julie Walters’ beloved husband. And Pirates of the Caribbean, hoping for a Johnny Depp nomination, is about a boatload of dead guys.

The survival of the entire human race is up for grabs in Lord of the Rings: Return of The King. And no matter what I do, I can’t seem to put Seabiscuit out of its misery.

If you want to find a serious Oscar candidate in which death does not play a key role, perhaps you have to look to - taa dah! - the war movies, Master & Commander and The Last Samurai. Isn’t it ironic?

One of the last great lines Winona Ryder spit out on a movie screen was in Dracula, as she asked Gary Oldman’s bloodsucker, “Take me away from all this death.” Is there a reason why the best films of America are so death-obsessed? You won’t see any planes crashing or buildings falling or Arabs fighting, but I imagine that 9/11 (November 9 to Eddie Izzard) has left filmmakers looking to express their feelings about loss without being too on the nose.

Mystic River is a departure for Eastwood, a film that is not so much a statement on violence as a statement on the vicious circle of human suffering. Both Civil War flicks, Cold Mountain and The Last Samurai, deal with men finding new meaning to their lives after having been through the war. House of Sand & Fog, the one movie that does feature a Middle Easterner, is loaded with ennui, and, like Mystic River, more judgmental of the tendency to violence than about those who do the violence.

There will be plenty of lovely distractions at the movies for the next few months. But prepare yourself for some very smart, very dark movies that speak to the most extreme of human experiences… right after taxes.

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No new charts this week… 20 Weeks To Oscar starts its weekly romp next Thursday and with it, weekly Oscar charts all the way until four days before the awards are given out.

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23 Weeks To Oscar
29 Weeks to Oscar

- by David Poland