Oscars are for schlubs. The Grahmmy Awards represent

You know that when you look back on
a year of film and the most towering achievement that stands out in
your mind is a single shot of an empty plastic bag dancing in the wind
against a brick wall backdrop while in voice over you hear something
to the effect of “sometimes when I think about all the beauty in the
world, I just can’t take it,” there are two schools of thought you can
belong to.
School One says that it was an unusual year for film,
School Two that it was a landmark year for film. I happen to be a strong
believer in both of those schools. And I hate school.
That scene in question comes from Sam Mendes’ letter
perfect “American Beauty,” and it’s a testament to the year that was
that I would go on to eat my words of mid-September when I said that
there would be no better film in calendar year 1999.
Because there were better films, and for the first
time in my memory, there was a teeth-gnawing, blood-spilling dirty violent
battle between films vying to be included on my personal 10 best list.
Whereas, say, last year, I was forced to include films that I was only
mildly amused with in my top 10, this was a year where I had to put
a lot of my sentimental favorites aside (sorry, “American Pie”) and
get down to the grunt work of choosing a representative top 10. It’s
enough to make a kid go mad.
There was a definite emergence of what could be chalked
up to pre-millennium tension in Cinema 1999, as film after film showed
the woes, plasticity, and overall meaninglessness of day-to-day suburban
upper middle class life. David Fincher’s “Fight Club” told us that IKEA
sucks, Mike Judge’s overlooked “Office Space” said that work sucks.
“American Beauty” said that everything sucks, and “The Matrix” told
us that not only does everything suck, but everything’s fake, too, and
truth be told we’re nothing but double A batteries for the giant insane
robots that grow us in fields and flush us down our own sewer systems
when we’re no longer needed!
Oh, and that you’re no Neo, and Morpheus more than
likely won’t be there to pick you up. Big fun! So by the time December
rolled around, even paranoia-crazed pros like Oliver Stone were offering
up 3 hour popcorn flicks that were light and easy going enough to have
even the most hardened cynics rooting for Jamie Foxx, of all people.
By December, we were all exhausted! No, it wasn’t
the still-looming ass cramps from “Wild Wild West” that had us reeling,
but rather the whole nY-school of cinema, embodied by tragically hip
offerings from nY school darlings like Doug Liman, Spike Jonze, David
O. Russell, Myrick and Sanchez and Brian Robbins. I was just kidding
about that last one.
But that does bring up an interesting point. Tired
formula movies like, say, “Varsity Blues,” or, why not, “The Phantom
Menace,” seemed even more tired and formulaic this past year. Why? Because
the 1900′s are over, bitch! It’s time to move on and buck the norm.
Like Davids Mamet and Lynch did by making G-rated
festivals of wholesome, and like Gregg Araki did by turning his back
on his apocalyptic nihilism of yore in favor of the screwball comedy
“Splendor.” Unlike Barry Sonnenfeld did in the exasperatingly bad “Wild,
Wild Worst.” But even amid all the hullabaloo of a Whole New Hollywood,
it’s going to be quite some time before every film does its initial
run at the Main Art Theatre.
So just calm down. And, eventually, 1999, like every
year before it, will fade into a blur of images from that year that
those who lived it will be able to look back upon with a sigh and a
smile and say, “ah, yes, Cinema 1999.” So for future retrospect’s sake,
here’s what could ring memorable for the great big blur of Cinema 1999.
On what I like to call “The Plus Side,” we had Michelle
Williams adopting an adorable crush on President Nixon in the quite
cute “Dick;” Philip Seymour Hoffman (playing yet another insipid rich
asshole) catching Matt Damon sneaking a peak at Gwenny and Jude Law
(“How’s the peeping, Tom? How’s the peeping, Tom?”) in “The Talented
Mr. Ripley;” Spike Jonze flashing back to his lonesome days of shooting
up cars back home before the war in “Three Kings;” Ron Livingston embodying
the very theologies that I ascend to (read: doing nothing) AND getting
Jennifer Aniston to watch Kung Fu with him in “Office Space;” Ron Livingston
passing out in freeway gutters, waking to find the screeching tires
of an oncoming vehicle stopping only inches from his head, and simply
rolling over and going back to sleep in “Body Shots;” M. Night Shammalamman
killing off a large part of his (unearned) buzz with his penning of
the stupid “Stuart Little;” literally, in “Sleepy Hollow;” “Payback”
taking the color of the “Bittersweet Symphony” video and running like
hell with it, thereby virtually daring Crayola to begin production on
a new crayon called simply “Payback Blue;” the racy/trashy/torrent taboo
smashing first half hour of “Cruel Intentions;” Jason Lee showing warmth
and range as a skateboarding billionaire computer whiz in “Mumford;”
Rob Schnieder ordering snails from the bottom of the tank in “Deuce
Bigalow: Male Gigolo;” Samuel L. Jackson getting chomped in half, totally
out of nowhere, mid-heroic speech in “Deep Blue Sea;” Jewel breastfeeding
in “Ride With the Devil;” and the learning that the delightful Michelle
Trachtenberg (“Harriet the Spy”) was cast as Penny in Disney’s “Inspector
Gadget.”
On the other end of the radar, there was the fact
that Penny had zero screen time/time to shine in “Inspector Gadget;”
the overall inexplicable un-funness of what the should have been sure-thing
“Inspector Gadget;” Tom Hanks’ forced/embarrassing comic relief in the
form of urinary track infections in the ridiculous “The Green Mile;”
the sitting through two hours of “Man on the Moon” and learning absolutely
nothing about Andy Kaufman; P.T.’s extreme and pretentious placing of
82′s anywhere and everywhere he could in “Magnolia;” the blobs of evil
that reigned as villains in the similarly titled and similarly stupid
“The Haunting” and “The House on Haunted Hill;” everybody but Jar Jar
Binks mugging their way through the uninspired space snore “The Phantom
Menace;” the striking similarities between Fiona Apple’s “Criminal”
video and the supposed “snuff” film at the heart of “8MM;” the shit
monster (and, hell, everything else) in “Dogma;” “Stigmata;” Spike Lee’s
overuse of symbolism (look! They’re losers! They hang out in front of
a sign that says “Dead End!”) in “Summer of Sam;” Ellen Degeneres as
te worst catchphrase spewing (“just pissin’ in your Cornflakes”) lesbian
detective of all time in “Goodbye, Lover;” and Disney’s headache inducing
X-games ready “Tarzan,” which was more suited to coincide with an Alec
Empire soundtrack than a Phil Collins one.
Jesus. This is beginning to run longer than a Norman
Jewison biopic. So that was 1999, in a nutshell. So let’s excuse the
blatant Austin Powers reference and march ahead to the Grahammy awards,
shall we?