In 2005, when Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published, Walter Kirn, writing in the New York Times Book Review, summed up the book's "grand ambition" this way: "To take on the most explosive subject available while showing no passion, giving no offense, adopting no point of view and venturing no sentiment more hazardous than that history is sad and brutal and wouldn't it be nicer if it weren't." Kirn couldn't, at that point, have seen Stephen Daldry's film adaptation of the book. But with that sentence, he pretty much wrote the review in advance.
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Screw Christmas. Forget Hanukkah. To hell with New Year's. There is only one holiday we celebrate in the dank, windowless labs of Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, and that is Oscar Night. Thus the latest edition of Oscar Index, offering all the festive year-end joy you can possibly stand. Let's get to it!
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It's time to do some shopping, kids. After a week of semi-reasonable Golden Globe nominations (!) and the tragic downfall of The Daldry, I'm throwing away wads of cash at the Glendale Americana and never looking back. Do you think they sell the exotic headgear Elizabeth Taylor wore in Raintree County? Maybe at Zara or something? I don't know. Let's review the week and run away somewhere.
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It's week three of the 2011-12 Oscar Index, and the latest measurements, readings and conclusions are in from Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. And aside from a few startling exceptions, they don't look that different than the ones disseminated here last week. But make no mistake: Like it or not, stuff is happening! Read on for the latest developments.
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