It Came from the Library: In a Lonely Place

For a connoisseur of pop-cultural flotsam (and a cheap bastard), there are few better sources than the Calgary Public Library. Movies, TV series, comics, records, even books — the potential for finding hidden gems is nearly limitless, and It Came from the Library will chronicle my excavation.

The find: In a Lonely Place (1950), starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, and directed by Nicholas Ray.

Shelf appeal: Well, Bogart, for a start. And late-career Bogart, at that. Also, the description on the box, involving an unlucky writer and his sexy neighbour entangled in a vintage noir plot, held a certain, shall we say, personal resonance.

The experience: The very definition of a gem. Bogart plays the wonderfully named Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter well past his prime in the eyes of all but his agent. Assigned to adapt a trashy novel that he can’t be bothered to read, he brings home a coat-check girl to explain the plot to him.

The next morning, Steele receives a visit from the local police department. The girl has been found dead, thrown out of a moving vehicle, and Steele was the last person to see her alive. New neighbour Laurel Gray, played by femme fatale par excellence Gloria Graham, provides Steele with an alibi, but it’s not enough to shake off police suspicion entirely. Like Bogart’s best characters, Steele isn’t exactly stable — he’s subdued but prone to violent outbursts, and even his long-time agent isn’t sure he didn’t kill the girl. But Gray falls for him anyway, starting with this scene set just after Steele’s interrogation.

Produced by Bogart’s own production company, Santana, In a Lonely Place gives Bogart a chance to wallow in the darker side of his screen image. Films like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca had firmly entrenched his big-screen persona a decade earlier — that of the straight-talking, blank-faced tough guy with a deeply hidden sentimentality — and films like 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre had shown what happens when that sentimentality disappears, but Lonely Place finds Bogart getting genuinely ugly. One scene in particular jumps out: invited home for dinner by a police detective who’s also an old war buddy, Steele encourages his host to re-enact the murder, to better understand the killer. Though he’s just following his writerly instinct to get in the heads of his characters, Steele’s fascination with the crime goes more than a little too far, and Bogart’s expression captures every bit of prurient glee. He encourages his old friend to strangle his wife, leering lecherously all the while —he all but licks his lips at the thought of the murder. It’s a nasty bit of work, but it’s impossible to look away from.

Graham, the wife of director Nicholas Ray, also does a fine job as Gray, a role that was supposedly meant for either Ginger Rogers or Bogart’s real-life wife, Lauren Bacall. Swept up in a relationship that she worries will end violently, Gray is constantly torn between love and fear, and Graham is adept at handling that divide. It’s not the typical noir role, in that Gray is neither a damsel in distress nor a manipulative cipher, but then the film itself isn’t a typical noir, either. Despite the requisite amount of murder, fisticuffs, glamourous women and seedy men, it moves beyond the genre thanks to its emphasis on character over plot contrivances, and its embedded critique of Hollywood.

The verdict: Of the Bogart films I’ve seen, I’d put it second only to Casablanca, which is saying something. Definitely worth a rummage through the library’s DVD racks.

Stray quotes: “This is not a costume, ignorant wench. It is the formal attire of a gentleman.”

“A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one: me fixing grapefruit, you sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we were in love.”

“Yesterday, this would have meant so much to us. Now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.”

“I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.”

Jack Lemmon Collection review

With his easygoing persona and mildly frazzled charm, Jack Lemmon helped set the template for the romantic comedy lead in the golden days of Hollywood. Those same traits also made him an easy favourite for directors like Billy Wilder, who cast him in such classics as Irma La Douce, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Sony’s new Jack Lemmon Collection doesn’t feature any of the actor’s collaborations with Wilder, nor does it spotlight any of Lemmon’s occasional (and acclaimed) dramatic turns. Instead, it features five never-before-on-DVD features, spanning from Lemmon’s second film and first lead role in 1954’s PHFFFT! to the mid-’60s farce Good Neighbour Sam.

Skipping Lemmon’s most acclaimed films means The Jack Lemmon Collection is a less-than-perfect introduction to the actor, but the films that Sony does include certainly have their charms. PHFFFT!, a quick lark about a recently divorced couple who inevitably come to regret the decision, proves that Lemmon had his persona worked out from the very beginning. Everything from his ease with rapid-fire dialogue to his effortless likability are already firmly in place. Military comedy Operation Mad Ball(1957) is pure madcap, with Lemmon as a scheming private stationed in France just as the war winds down. Ignoring a typically over-the-top cameo from Mickey Rooney as a jazz-obsessed officer, it’s probably the best of the bunch. Film noir spoof The Notorious Landlady (1962) gives it a run for its money, though, thanks in particular to a lead turn from Vertigo’s Kim Novak and a fine supporting performance from the always classy Fred Astaire.

Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) sees Lemmon playing against type as a lecherous landlord meddling in the love life of one of his tenants. Lemmon’s character is an absolute lout, and the actor seems to revel in playing a character who’s so purely unlikable. Good Neighbor Sam (1964) takes a similar tack, though Lemmon’s character, a humble ad man, starts off as a clean-cut, all-American family man before getting tangled up in a morally questionable situation in the hopes of an easy $1 million. The two films make for an interesting time capsule of America’s changing values in the mid-’60s, but they also both play things overly broadly — especially in the sitcom-ish music cues that punctuate both.

Special features are pretty minimal, with theatrical trailers for all the films and a fawning, if not particularly informative, documentary hosted by Lemmon’s son. Still, the films themselves are well presented, and the set is a solid addition to any classic film buff’s collection.

Akron/Family set ’em free of cynicism (interview)

“To turn your back on something that’s sincere — I mean, it might not be for you, and that’s fine — but to turn on it because it is sincere is a real shame,” says Akron/Family drummer Dana Janssen. “What the hell are you doing if you’re not being honest with yourself, or if you’re not trying to bring some sort of positivity to what’s going on in a certain scene, or just in life in general? I don’t want to be tied into somebody trying to bring me down.”

Few modern bands are as fully devoted to positivity as Akron/Family. Originally lumped into the freak-folk scene that included artists like Devandra Banhardt, it didn’t take the band long to break free from the musical shackles of any particular genre. Having transformed from a four-piece to a trio when founding member Ryan Vanderhoof left to live in a Buddhist Dharma centre, the band reached a whole new level of eclecticism on this year’s Set ’Em Wild, Set ’Em Free by incorporating everything from Afrobeat to skittering electronics into their already sprawling sound. The hippie tag, on the other hand, has been harder to shake.

It doesn’t help that Akron’s live shows are something of a communal experience. The band’s lineup often swells to include any other musicians that happen to be in the area, not to mention the audience members who catch the assortment of tambourines, shakers and other noisemakers that the band doles out. It’s a strategy that seems custom-tailored to cut through the cynicism that sometimes plagued audiences at the band’s early Brooklyn gigs, but it actually evolved quite naturally.

“We used to be a little more introverted, I suppose, and detail-oriented,” Janssen explains. “We used to sit down when we played and it was a little quieter and more focused. There was a certain point where we [just said] ‘Man, I really like it when I’m at a show and people start dancing.’ Like, we had a few tunes that people would start to dance to, and we wanted to work some ways to allow people to enjoy themselves. At one point, we just started jamming and Seth and Miles and myself and Ryan would throw percussion toys at people in the crowd and see how they reacted — and most of them picked it up and jumped up onstage.”

From there, the band’s live prowess only grew, and these days they inspire a loyalty in their audience that hearkens back to the days of The Grateful Dead. Rumours of the lengths the band will take to connect with their audience may be exaggerated — Janssen bursts into laughter when asked about a mythical Toronto performance where band and audience alike took mushrooms at the show — but the fact that those rumours are spreading at all speaks loudly of the band’s connection with its fans.

“To use the word mythology, that’s an interesting way to look at it,” Janssen says before pondering the implications. “I feel like, with that, you get more of a story. It’s not just, ‘Oh this band has put a record out, blah blah blah.’ There’s something that people can really find some magic in. Whether it’s a rumour that everybody gets mushrooms before a show or whatever, there’s some sort of sense of it growing on its own in a way that could be really beneficial and starts its own cultural movement in a way that the Dead did or that Fugazi did. I’m really much more inspired by something growing in that fashion.”

The larger audience that comes with that growth is a bit of a mixed blessing for the band. When they opened for Wilco in Spain recently, the band had to deal with bouncers who were justifiably concerned about fans running willy-nilly onto the stage, forcing the band to find new ways to connect with the audience and keep the performance vibrant. The larger profile also leads to slots like their folk fest set on Saturday, July 25 — a large, outdoor venue with a crowd that’s unfamiliar with the band’s music, let alone their live persona. Janssen isn’t worried, though.

“They’re all Canadian, man, and Canadians are so much more open to things like this,” he says. “Canadians are much more accepting of things and willing to listen to it. Maybe it’s not your cup of tea at the end of the day, but whatever. I feel like there’s more of a willingness to participate in what’s going on. It might not seem like a good fit at first, but it ends up being so out of place that it becomes interesting

Hazardous territory - Interview with the Decemberists

A swooning maiden; a murderous rake; a magical shape-shifter — the cast of characters in The Hazards of Love is about as removed from rock convention as it gets. The fifth full-length album from Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists, who will be headlining the Calgary Folk Music Festival on Friday night, Hazards is the band’s most ambitious work by far. Consisting of a single narrative built from the archetypes of British folk tales, Hazards has been billed as a “fake musical” and a “folk opera,” though frontman and songwriter Colin Meloy is evasive when asked what distinguishes those terms from the usual concept album.

“It’s equal parts concept record, rock opera, folk opera [and] burnt toast,” he says with a hint of fatigue. “People just desperately need to describe music as being something and not something else, so I’ve just tried to help in that process.”

Musically, Hazards is a significant departure from the upbeat pop and acoustic ballads that have largely characterized The Decemberists’ output since the band’s 2003 debut. The folk influences are still there, but they’ve been augmented with hard-rock muscle and a refined version of the prog tendencies that the band first showed on its 2004 The Tain single.

Lyrically, though, the album is a natural culmination of Meloy’s fascination with storytelling in song. He structures the album as a play, writing from the perspective of the various characters and casting ringers like Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden to deliver their parts.

His reluctance to pin down his latest creation might have something to do with the album’s origins. Originally intending to write a “real” musical, Meloy found that Hazards’ story just wouldn’t fit the demands of the stage. While pop music’s rigid formulas hardly seem like an easier venue for storytelling — the increasingly prevalent and increasingly overwrought concept albums of the ’70s played a huge role in spurring the punk rebellion, after all — Meloy actually found the structure helpful.

“What’s interesting and challenging about pop music is that it’s such a kind of blueprint that you need to follow,” he says. “Nobody would want to play a Scrabble game if there were no borders and you could have as many letters as you like, and each letter gave you 10 points, and any words were acceptable. It’d be a boring game.”

“I think in creating songs, in any genre, in any medium, there are rules you need to follow that make for a more interesting creative process,” he continues. “And [it makes] for a more interesting listening process, because the people who listen to it are aware of the rules and aware of the structures. That’s why Phish — that band, Phish — are not interesting to me. It’s like watching a Scrabble game being played with no rules.”

That sense of structure is also present in the band itself. The line between Meloy and The Decemberists is a hard one to distinguish. From the literary ambitions of his lyrics to his fondness for nautical imagery and historical trappings, Meloy’s idiosyncrasies define the band. Where most bands try to present themselves as a united front, Meloy and The Decemberists have found the opposite approach to be more practical.

“I think that we’re all in agreement that true democracy is a challenging thing to have in a band dynamic, so it’s better to have a sort of benevolent dictatorship,” the singer says. “And that’s the political system that we live under. So, as the benevolent dictator myself, I feel free to make some wild decisions that involve just randomly veering off into different directions — and I think typically it ends up being good for the creative force of the band.”

Being the dictator also means perpetually standing in the spotlight, but Meloy seems comfortable with his public persona. Despite being a self-described homebody and misanthrope, he keeps in touch with fans through a Twitter page (twitter.com/Colinmeloy) that has collected over 600,000 followers — a milestone self-deprecatingly commemorated by posting “Cracked 600K followers! Thank you, roaming scavenger e-bots.” He also tours solo on occasion and has accompanied each of his solo ventures with a release in the Colin Meloy Sings series of EPs, which pays tribute to artists he admires, like British folk singer Shirley Collins and soul pioneer Sam Cooke.

It makes for an interesting contradiction. While Meloy makes the effort to avoid the “ivory tower” dynamic that often marks the relationship between a musician and his fans, he also shares very little of himself in his music. Unlike most lyricists, his songs almost entirely eschew autobiography, maintaining a constant amount of narrative detachment. In Meloy’s view, though, that dramatic distance isn’t a barrier between him and his audience.

“It’s sort of a middle ground,” he explains. “Whereas more non-fiction or memoirist monologues about yourself require the audience to paste their experiences onto yours, [by] creating an outside character and witnessing their tragedies and victories, I think it’s actually easier for an audience to relate to those characters.”

Even as he says it, though, it’s clear Meloy is getting tired of explaining himself. For the songwriter whom many consider the intellectual face of pop music, questions about terminology and structure and historical significance all seem beside the point.

“I don’t know,” he says with a sigh. “It’s just writing music and making songs.”

Can Public Enemies really be that bad?

“Critical consensus,” that vague sense of agreement measured by aggregator sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, isn’t exactly a reliable indicator of quality. Still, the one thing it is good for is providing a ballpark of what to expect from a film — so it can be off-putting, especially as a critic, to find yourself too far outside that ballpark.

Sometimes the disconnect is understandable. Last year’s Hellboy II wasn’t much of a movie if you value well-written dialogue and storylines that make some effort to avoid Chernobyl-sized plot holes. It was unarguably pretty, though, and had some well-designed monsters. I could see why some folks might’ve liked it enough to earn the movie a 78 per cent rating on Metacritic, even if I thought it was hopelessly trite.

It works the other way, too. I thought Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool was a masterwork of horror minimalism and a great twist on the zombie genre; it was a movie that could be called great without having to qualify that with “for a Canadian film.” Critics in general apparently found it too talkie, with not enough zombies. Fair enough.

Which brings me to Michael Mann’s new Dillinger biopic, Public Enemies. I’ve never found myself so removed from the critical consensus. Writers I’ve respected for years are calling it their favourite film of 2009. I just don’t get it.

To me, Mann’s film is an unlovable mess. The script refuses to glamourize its subjects, but it also refuses to do anything else with them, like, say, providing some sort of insight into their lives. The direction is distractingly flashy, avoiding establishing shots in favour of disorienting close-ups and out-of-focus over-the-shoulder angles. The acting is generally laughable. Worst of all, the digital video looks almost disgustingly cheap — more like a low-budget Canadian TV drama from the ’90s than a big-budget gangster thriller. My reaction upon leaving the theatre wasn’t “That was disappointing” as much as “My God, how did that get released?”

So what happens now? Do I turn in my critic’s card in shame? Do I re-watch it to see what I’m missing? Or can I safely say that if a film banks on style over substance and the style does nothing but grate on me, it’s a failure as far as I’m concerned? Maybe there is a lesson here — even for film reviewers, you’ve gotta take the critics with a grain of salt.

Moon review

There are two kinds of science fiction films: those that use the trappings of the genre for escapism, and those that use it more philosophically. There have been plenty of examples of the former lately. Some have been good (Star Trek). Many could politely be called an acquired taste (think Death Race, Jumper or Meet Dave, if you’re nasty). The more high-minded ones, though, the ones that pipe-smoking folks prefer to call “speculative fiction,” are a rare breed.

Put Moon squarely in that latter camp. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is a contractor for Lunar Industries, a company that has solved Earth’s energy crisis by harvesting fuel for nuclear fusion from the dark side of the moon. For three years, Sam’s only companion has been a robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), whose smiley-face emoticons are charming, but no substitute for real human contact. With two weeks left in his contract, Sam is eager to get back to Earth — but an accident in his rover and the appearance of a younger doppelgänger puts his journey home into question.

Unlike a lot of modern films, Moon isn’t particularly secretive with its twists. Both Sam and the audience figure out what’s going on relatively early, and while that does hurt the film’s momentum, it gives it plenty of opportunity to explore its pet issues. The script, written by Nathan Parker and director Duncan Jones, is both narratively straightforward and philosophically complex, dragging up issues of morality, identity and even the very nature of humanity.

That’s a lot to pin on what’s essentially a one-man show, but Rockwell is more than up to the task. Provided the film gets the right kind of attention, this is exactly the kind of role Oscar voters eat up. Spacey’s role as Gerty shouldn’t be underestimated, though. With its soothing voice and the robot’s crude but appealing “face,” it’s easy to picture the robot moving into HAL territory, but the filmmakers have grander commentary in mind. That Spacey can make Gerty as sympathetic as he does shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is, especially since it’s been a while — over a decade, actually — since he’s been in a genuinely good film.

Visually, Moon is heavily indebted to decades-old sci-fi films like Outland, Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jones heavily favours miniatures and keeps the CGI to a minimum. It’s a decidedly low-budget approach, but it never feels cheap. Instead, the scrappy physicality of the set actually helps to ground the film’s more philosophical wanderings. The score by Clint Mansell is also quite wonderful, accentuating the mood without ever manipulating emotions.

The low-budget, minor-key approach is entirely appropriate considering the lunar setting. Flashy CGI and broad emotions might work for locations beyond our imaginations, but humans have been to the moon. It’s within our reach. And this is a Moon well worth visiting.

God Help the Girl

You could fill an entire review with what God Help the Girl might be. The album shares a title with an as-yet-unshot film by Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. The booklet contains the beginning of a short story and the album itself is billed not as a soundtrack or concept album, but a “musical narrative.” How it relates to all of those projects isn’t clear and won’t be at least until the film emerges.

What God Help the Girl might be hardly matters, though, in the face of what it is. Murdoch has once again crafted a collection of pop gems that pays tribute to the greats of AM radio, from girl groups to acoustic folk. This time, though, he’s largely given the vocal duties to a bevy of ringers, from relative unknown Catherine Ireton to Smoosh’s Asya. Hearing Murdoch’s melodies without his typically fey delivery is off-putting at first, but once the shock wears off, it’s a revelation. Ireton’s measured, carefully enunciated delivery matches Murdoch’s crisp production, while Brittany Stallings brings a confidence and — dare I say it — sass to “Funny Little Frog” (one of two tunes borrowed from Belle and Sebastian’s 2006 The Life Pursuit) that reveals a soulful underpinning not obvious in the original. “I’ll Have to Dance with Cassie” and “Come Monday Night” are both showstoppers, sounding like radio hits from a bygone era.

If and when Murdoch’s film emerges, it might be worthwhile to re-examine God Help the Girl. Until then, it’s safe to ignore what this album might be and just enjoy it for what it is — another stab at sunny pop perfection from one of the most consistent songwriters going.

Wilco (The Album) review

Wilco (The Album) by Wilco (the band) opens with “Wilco (The Song),” a tongue-in-cheek ode to the ability of music to save lives. “Are times getting tough?” frontman Jeff Tweedy asks, before offering “a sonic shoulder for you to cry on,” and reassuring that “Wilco will love you, baby.” For an artist who has never gone out of his way to comfort fans, even going so far as to inflict the aural equivalent of his persistent migraines on fans on 2004’s A Ghost is Born, it’s a pretty big turnaround.

Then again, the Wilco of Wilco (The Album) isn’t the Wilco of five years ago. As 2007’s Sky Blue Sky made clear, Tweedy and company are shaving off the rough edges of their sound. After the experiments of Ghost and 2001’s instant-classic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it seems that Tweedy is looking to solidify the Wilco sound.

Even for fans who prefer Ghost’s abstractions to the sprawling pop of 1999’s Summerteeth, this return to straightforwardness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Wilco (The Song)” is as satisfying as any of the band’s pop songs to date and murder ballad “Bull Black Nova” marries the band’s krautrock dalliances with grim imagery to powerful effect. If the entire album managed to synthesize the band’s output the way those tracks do, it’d be a masterpiece.

Other tracks feel significantly less essential, though. “You Never Know” is catchy enough with its driving pulse and refrain of “I don’t care anymore,” but its “kids-these-days” message seems trite compared to Tweedy’s usual impressionistic lyrics. “Solitaire” recalls John Lennon’s sadder moments with its double-tracked vocals and deep longing, but it doesn’t deliver the same gut-punch as, say, Summerteeth’s “How to Fight Loneliness.” And the lack of Tweedy’s meandering, near-tuneless fuzz guitar solos, which arguably provided Ghost’s emotional core, is sure to disappoint longtime fans.

As an attempt to merge Wilco’s post-millennial experimentation with its alt-country roots, Wilco (The Album) is a success, adding welcome texture to the band’s Americana rock. As a new direction for Wilco the band, though, it’s not going to win back fans who saw Sky Blue Sky as a regression. Wilco may love us, but the band was more interesting when it didn’t try to prove it.

Sin Nombre review

It’s not a shock that Adriano Goldman picked up the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival for his work on Sin Nombre. The film, which tells the intertwining tales of a Mexican gangster and a Honduran family looking to emigrate to the U.S. by whatever means it can, is stunningly shot. The deft framing and rich colours (the film was shot on 35mm stock instead of the digital video more prominent among indie filmmakers) emphasize the harsh beauty of both the crime-laden slums and the overcrowded trains that make up the bulk of the film’s settings without glossing over either.

Fortunately, the film has the substance to back up the photography — director Cary Joji Fukunaga won the dramatic directing award at that same festival, after all. Fukunaga’s screenplay covers some well-worn territory, from gangland initiations to budding romance and father-daughter tension, but it handles each of these themes in a sensitive and altogether believable manner. The naturalistic performances he coaxes from the cast only add to the effect.

Newcomer Edgar Flores plays Casper, a mid-level member of a Mexican street gang led by Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), a tattooed tough who preaches brotherly love but has no qualms issuing harsh discipline to anyone who crosses him. While on a robbery, Casper has a change of heart, making him a hero to Sayra (Paulina Gaitán), a teenager making her way to the U.S. with her father and earning him a death sentence from his former allies. Chief amongst his enemies is Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer), a 13-year-old who offers to hunt Casper down in order to redeem himself in the eyes of the gangsters he emulates.

From Casper’s pivotal moment onwards, Sin Nombre marches relentlessly towards its inevitable outcome. The film lays out its stakes early on, establishing the ruthlessness of both Mexico’s underworld and the desperate journey from Honduras to the U.S.. Both stories show the lengths that people will go to for survival, the latter echoing a depression-era America that’s been all but forgotten and the former depicting both the glamour and the horror of organized crime. That it will end unhappily for most of the major characters is a given — these are worlds where, more often than not, there are no winners.

Fukunaga’s ability to depict this grim reality in such a vivid film is remarkable. That he finds moments of beauty within it is as much of a victory as any of his characters could hope for.

Oscars expand playing field

On June 24, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a major change to the best picture category at the annual Oscar ceremonies. For the first time since 1935, the category will expand beyond the usual five nominees — it’ll spotlight 10 movies, all vying for the illustrious best picture nom.

There has been a lot of speculation in the media as to the reasons for the move (or at least there was, until a certain celebrity death took over every column inch of every entertainment publication). The Academy’s press release says they’re just trying “to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.” The question, then, is which squeezed-out movies will now be in the running?

The best picture category is never going to include everyone’s favourites, even with the expanded scope. Genre fare like The Dark Knight tends to get the shaft, as summer popcorn fare (even exceptionally well-made popcorn fare) is often seen as beneath the Academy’s dignity. Also, animated flicks are sequestered into their own category, even when the picture in question is, in fact, the year’s best movie. If the goal is to include those movies in the list of nominees, it seems like a questionable move — they’re still not likely to win overall and they don’t exactly need the sales boost a nomination can provide.

On the other hand, there are some flicks that could benefit hugely from the change. Profoundly weird, intentionally alienating movies like Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York often have a hard time reaching that critical mass of Academy voters, who usually favour safer, more conventional picks. Ten nominees also make it that much more likely that a hidden gem will sneak through — some low-budget indie without the backing necessary to launch a major Academy Awards campaign might just stand a chance of getting nominated.

Some folks have said that the extra nominations cheapen the award (or at least the nomination), as they’re just diluting the pool of quality films. That’d be assuming that the main value of the Oscar is the prestige, though, which is only partially true. Even ignoring the huge number of film fans who consider the awards irrelevant, there’s no doubt that the ceremony can bring a movie a whole new audience — just look at Slumdog Millionaire. If the new changes can do the same thing for a handful of deserving movies, well, that seems worthwhile in itself.