Nominees: Traffic, Almost Famous, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Memento, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Peppermint Candy, The Day I Became a Woman, In the Mood for Love, Amores Perros, The Captive
Oscars pick: Gladiator
Nominees: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Traffic
2000 got off to a rocky start, with Oscar selecting the paper-thin Gladiator as its best picture. My brother loves this film -- I say it's no Spartacus and didn't even deserve a nomination, let alone the award. Of the Academy's choices, they should have gone with Traffic. They gave Soderbergh the directorial award but screwed him on the Best Picture. I didn't care too much for Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich, I found it hackneyed -- and if Brockovich really is like that, then she's an abrasive cliché.
If not Traffic, then the Academy should have selected Ang Lee’s wuxia film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which they gave the foreign award to). Aside from that, they left off too many goodies, such as Cameron Crowe's love letter to the music biz, Almost Famous or the Coen Brother's hilarious odyssey, O Brother Where Art Thou? which featured a winning soundtrack collection of folk, county, bluegrass, and gospel tunes - and had folks digging on the classic, "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow".
Out of them all, there was one delightful find that jumped to the top of the pops, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi.
The title means "Individual" in Chinese and is the first word in their dictionary. The movie runs nearly 3 hours and at a deliberate pace, but if you're patient the story offers rich rewards. It's a contemplative piece about average everyday people who wrestle with the meaning of life. Beautifully acted and directed, with a script that’s inspired. Yi Yi is about as deeply moving and insightful a film as I've ever seen.
Blogger Simon Ferrari considers it the 'film of the decade' and noted how the movie addresses,” …the clash in East Asia between tradition and westernization, morality and technology, youth and age. About the disintegration and reconciliation of a sprawling family", he continues by adding, "Its cinematography is finely-tuned, with entire conversations caught in reflections on glass surfaces, long takes, and incredible depth of field. It is funny, heartbreaking, perfect."
Nick Rogers said that it... "scratches the identifiable itch to reach out for what we've loved, set free and had come back, perhaps still not meant to be: jobs, lovers, freedoms, opportunities."
Yi Yi is one of those movies that sticks with you. Days, even weeks later it would return to my mind. Characters like the little boy pictured above, who takes photographs of people backs because he wants to show them what they cannot see. A thought that reflects the philosophy of the entire film – there is another side to every story, there are things in life that we do not see clearly.
Movies I didn't nominate but like a lot, include: Girlfight, Best in Show (and a shout out to that cast), Ginger Snaps, Unbreakable, X-Men, Quills, You Can Count on Me, Panic, State and Main (Macy is great here, but Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Rebecca Pidgeon steal the show), Audition, Two Family House, The Big Kahuna (with Danny DeVito at his best), to name more than a few
And other actors I liked... David Thewlis, Paul Bettany, and Malcolm McDowell in Gangster No 1, Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable, Sol Kyung-gu in Peppermint Candy, Chow Yun-Fat in Crouching Tiger, George Clooney in O Brother Where Art Thou? Kate Winslet in Quills, Ériq Ebouaney, Lumumba.
Honorable Mentions:
Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me * Guy Pearce, Memento * Ed Harris, Pollack * Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire * Geoffrey Rush, Quills * Stellan Skarsgård, Aberdeen * Tony Leung Chiu Wai, In the Mood for Love * Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls * William H. Macy & Donald Sutherland, Panic * Lee Byung-hun, Joint Security Area * Kōji Yakusho, Eureka * Eric Bana, Chopper
Honorable Mentions:
Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me * Bjork, Dancer in the Dark * Gillian Anderson, The House of Mirth * Zhang Ziyi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon * Marie-Josée Croze, Maelström * Lena Headey, Aberdeen * Maggie Cheung, In the Mood for Love * Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock * Aoi Miyazaki, Eureka * Sylvie Testud, The Captive
