Day: February 4, 2006

This is desperate-sounding chitter-chat on one level, but on another level it’s kind of fun. It would be startling, of course, if Crash were to take the Best Picture Oscar away from Brokeback Mountain. It won’t happen, but it would be fascinating if it did. I would survive and so would Ang Lee and James Schamus, and the world would not be that different a place the morning after…but c’mon. We’re all pretty sure what’s going to happen. I think.

I missed mentioning this yesterday, but there’s a second showing of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man — in my view the finest and without question most critically honored documentary of 2005 — on the Discovery Channel this evening (Saturday, 2.4) at 8 pm.

Carlos Reygadas’ Battle in Heaven, a follow-up feature to his widely acclaimed Japon, is getting most of its attention because of a depiction of a dull schlumpy guy being orally serviced at the beginning and end of the film. It’s a blowjob that seems rote and passionless and is certainly boring to watch (it isn’t remotely in the league of the Brown Bunny finale). The provider is a pretty and sophisticated young girl of 17 or 18 from a wel-to-do family, and the receiver is a homely middle-aged lump with inexpressive eyes and a gross pot belly. And he’s not reacting in any noticable way — he could be standing in front of a mirror with a tailor measuring the cuff of his pants. For me, the nothingness of this scene is indicative of the nothingness of the film itself.

For me, the gruesome story of the Black Dahlia murder peaked when I watched a fascinating passage in a Vikram Jayanti doc called James Ellroy’s Feast of Death, a study of the life of the fabled crime writer. The passage showed L.A. Times copy editor Larry Harnisch explain why be believes the would-be actress was killed by a middle-aged surgeon named Walter Bayley. It’s a very convincing theory, and chilling to think about. Does anyone else find it suspicious that Pat Broeske‘s N.Y. Times story doesn’t hint or even ask whether Brian DePalma’s upcoming film about the murder tale, simply called The Black Dahlia, will deal with Bayley or go with some DePalma-level b.s. fictional scenario. If I know DePalma…