Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2003

The Contenders:

American Splendor
City of God
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (winner)
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2003

The Contenders:

Fernando Meirelles: City of God
Peter Jackson: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (winner)
Sofia Coppola: Lost in Translation
Peter Weir: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Clint Eastwood: Mystic River

South American Way, Part II

Film: Cidade de Deus (City of God)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

My podcasting partner Nick Jobe is running/ran a review tournament at the Large Association of Movie Blogs. Under duress, I participated (I was Nick's third back-up for people who dropped). I made it to the third round. I'm posting two of those reviews yesterday and today, since they are a part of The List.

American crime movies tend to glorify crime. Films like Oceans 11 portray criminals as people we’d like to hang out with. They’re sort of like Harlequin Romance heroes—they’re attractive, talented, potentially wealthy, and have a whiff of danger about them without really being dangerous. This is true all the way back to the 1930s. While characters like Tom Powers in The Public Enemy are harsh, they’re also charismatic. There’s something attractive about them. People even like psychotic killers. Hannibal Lecter, Freddy Krueger…these guys have fan clubs. Even though we know these are bad guys, there’s a part of us that roots for them at least a little.

Cidade de Deus (City of God) does not present us with this exotic and mildly entertaining life of crime. The people in this film don’t pull off capers or say something droll when polishing off a victim. This is real crime, the sort that we like to pretend doesn’t happen. It’s dirty, ugly and brutal. Violence happens suddenly and without warning, and the cheapest commodity is human life, particularly the lives of children.