"There now is something called 'independent cinema' in India," Galen Rosenthal, the program director of the South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF), told The Wall Street Journal. So how might the organizers of SAIFF and of the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council festival (MIACC), the two largest, oldest and last in a run of a half-dozen such festivals that took place this fall, demarcate this novel category? Going by their curation, it includes the country's popular regional cinemas; films made abroad by persons of Indian heritage; films made in India by foreigners; films designed specifically, even cynically, not for domestic consumption but for the international festival circuit; and any Hindi film made by smaller players. Is it, then, simply Not Bollywood?

Only this negative definition can account for, among other curious inclusions by both festivals, the most appealing film screened at either: a Tamil-language production based on the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana and boasting not only the marquee director Mani Ratnam and one of the largest budgets of any Indian film in history but also the superstar Aishwarya Rai, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. Raavanan, in which an aggrieved bandit-king kidnaps the wife of the police officer trying to assassinate him, is the rare film that answers the halfhearted prophecies of mainstream Indian cinema's imminent breakthrough in North America: a story that is both indigenous and universal; imagery that is riotously, unnecessarily, nonsensically exuberant; musical numbers that feel natural and coherent rather than a reverse-engineering of the soundtrack into the film; production values sufficient to overcome kitsch; coracles, gang rape, wire-fu. The "independence" of this particular juggernaut is the more dubious when one considers that Raavanan was simultaneously shot and separately released as Raavan, a Bollywood version that switched out the Tamil actor Vikram for the Hindi-film star Abhishek Bachchan. (It's possible the festivals' avoidance of Bollywood fare owes less to curatorial rigidity than to fear of a genre ghetto.) Mr. Bachchan, opposite real-life wife Ms. Rai, is ruinously miscast; Vikram, who offered sexy respite from the pampered sameness of Bollywood's leading men, was in Raavan demoted to playing bad cop to Mr. Bachchan's raving antihero, an insatiate, bloated, kohl-eyed monster who resembles what Dave Navarro might look like after eating the other members of Jane's Addiction.

I asked Irrfan Khan--the titular Paan Singh Tomar in another festival film about a charismatic outlaw fighting corrupt cops, and an actor whose greater favor in Western films than as a conventional Bollywood lead is probably due to his own interesting looks (which put me in mind of a compliment The Times' Bosley Crowther once paid Jean-Paul Belmondo: "hypnotically ugly")--about the problems India's independent filmmakers seem to have in staking out their territory. Mr. Khan believes that subject matter is in part to blame. Although he dismissed the charges of poverty-peddling that dogged and outlived Ray, of today's filmmakers he said, "The festival films, they are about poverty. We are still looking for a voice that is universal, which doesn't have to deal with the poverty, with how pathetic conditions in India are."

Poverty surely is part of what filmmakers continue to find salable in India, but that motif is now part of something larger, an India of lawlessness, that comprises Schadenfreude-ready poverty as well gangsterism and anarchic capitalism. Indeed, gangster-capitalism (as distinct from the old-fashioned romantic outlawry of Paan Singh Tomar, Raavanan, etc.) has become its own stable category. In SAIFF's opening-night feature, That Girl in Yellow Boots, a Briton overstaying her visa in Bombay while searching for her truant father and baby-sitting her junkie boyfriend and working illegally in a massage parlor spends much of the film paying off a queue of extortionate figures--police and postal workers get cash; drug dealers get hand jobs. In MIACC's similarly surly opening-night feature, Shor ("Noise"), three Bombay story lines overlap in confluences of bribery, extortion and sundry criminality. With Love to Obama (for all purposes, a low-budget Bollywood comedy), about a crew of bottom-feeding small-fry kidnappers (one of whom is schoolboy-smitten with America and its president), is yet another vision of the state as parasitic or predatory, an entitled and undeserving gangster in chief, in contrast with the integrity of criminal entrepreneurs. "The Indian underworld is more honest than America's corporate world," marvels Om, the insolvent Indian-American businessman abducted by the hapless goons. Om exploits the criminals' self-regulating rectitude by devising an investment scam--Ponzi meets pig-in-a-poke--with himself as the overvalued asset, defrauding a succession of ever-more eminent kidnappers in order to pay off the previous ones, all of whom are suffering amid the global recession. (He takes a cut each time, and so gets to save his house in Queens from foreclosure.) 

Such a constellation of theme and subject matter in these and other recent films, along with hard-boiled mega-city cool and the requisite ebullient syncretism, points not to a hive-mind convergence of sensibilities but to the influence of a tested formula. This, making its presence felt, was a second ghost: Slumdog Millionaire.

Mr. Khan, who is best known stateside as the police investigator in Danny Boyle's 2008 film, agrees. "Slumdog," he asserted, "has changed things. Slumdog has woken up the American market, and now ... there's a possibility of making money." But because Slumdog (which had its U.S. premiere at MIAAC) was an international Hollywood-financed production rather than an Indian film, and because the Indian media's initial wariness toward it so quickly shifted to unreflective, supine enthusiasm, its aesthetic reverberations have been as shallow as they are broad. If it has inspired, it has also constrained. With their best market not at home but in the Anglophone West, with so little hope of recovering even modest budgets domestically, with their models for sleek internationalism so few (one thinks also of the crossover films of Deepa Mehta and Mira Nair), no wonder India's smaller narrative filmmakers are haunted by Mr. Boyle. He got the drop on them. Shor, to its credit, does sultry, rampant, venal, badass Bombay far better than Slumdog. But with Mr. Boyle having bought the rights to Maximum City--Suketu Mehta's definitive journalistic portrait of Bombay--which was itself influential to Slumdog's atmospherics; with Ms. Mehta set to direct the film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; and with Ms. Nair set to direct and Johnny Depp signed to star in Shantaram, the fictionalized memoirs of an Australian-convict-turned-escapee-turned-Bombay-mafioso-turned-novelist, there is still much catching up to be done.

Perhaps this anxiety of influence is reflected in the substantial number of SAIFF and MIACC features about filmmaking itself. Just as Bollywood has long made movies about the making of Bollywood movies, these films are about inexperienced filmmakers' thwarted attempts at filmmaking. The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project follows the trials of a young Web site administrator who wants to make a short art film. Despite Kartik's callowness (his influences are Tarantino and more Tarantino), he finds himself taken under the wing of the indie filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan (played by the director of the film, the indie filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan). Artistic differences dog the production. "You talk Pulp Fiction, but you write American Pie," scolds Srinivas. "Don't do a Slumdog on me." And Kartik is stalked by a wraithlike, sunglassed bureaucrat-enforcer who claims that the would-be filmmaker doesn't have permission to make a film. Kartik tries ignoring his pursuer, running away, bribing him. "You still haven't understood me," says the Fury, finally bringing Kartik to heel. "I am the system. I'm always around you. You want to tell a story to an audience, don't you? So go ahead, don't be scared. I'll help you. By following the law. And I'm the law." "Right now," warns Srinivas, "you've been treading on that very thin line between your very cool independent cinema and very [salable] commercial cinema." (The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project has been touted as India's first mumblecore film.)

In Life! Camera Action, Reina, a student at New York Film Academy, has been disowned by her parents for defying their wishes that she do something befitting a respectable middle-class girl. "America is a free nation," Reina counters, "and so am I!" Luckily, Reina has passion, which, according to her professor, is what matters most: "All successful people, in any industry, Bill Gates, Anil Kapoor--you know him, right? Played the host in Slumdog Millionaire. Or Danny Boyle, director, Slumdog Millionaire, very successful." But since neither passion nor parents pay the bills, Reina has to work two jobs (Indian video store, Indian restaurant) and continues to do so even with the deadline for her unplanned thesis film a week off. Given such long odds, muses the professor, "Satyajit Ray is going to come out of his grave to help you, right?" (Unfortunately, Ray was cremated.)

The dutiful nods, name-checking rather than artistic reference, appear as well in Autograph, which contains a curious tension between the dewy-eyed antagonist's ambition--to create a new version of Ray's Nayak, garnished with "a bit of Bergman's Wild Strawberries"--and the style of the film, which is glossy and conventional. And in Slackistan, in which the doe-like Hasan, saddled with post-college ennui and an untouched digital video camera, drifts around the city looking without success for a copy of Mean Streets. The city is Islamabad, which makes the film one of a few non-Indian submissions to sneak in under cover of SAIFF's first two initials. Slackistan ("Pakistan's first-ever slacker movie," which one of the film's stars went so far as to call "the anti-Slumdog" but which happily borrowed that film's fractured yellow typeface for the intertitles punctuating Hasan's peregrinations) is exceptional as well because its Westernness feels not anxious but innate. Hasan, played by the nonprofessional Shahbaz Shigri, is American in his speech, his sneakers, even his body: the broad, rolled-forward shoulders, the titanic adolescent slouch; like Jake Gyllenhaal with eyes from a Savafid miniature. Hasan and his friends, cruising aimlessly in a parental Benz, wincing at mobile-phone videos of beheadings, checking status updates on what one of their mothers calls "MyFace."

"One thing's for certain," says an ex-insurgent to an ex-would-be-insurgent in Harud ("Autumn"), whose own aimless youth live in Indian-occupied Kashmir. "The path to paradise does not go via Pakistan." The ex-would-be is Rafiq, who looks like a beautiful sad frog. Harud is a stately, elliptical film that looks inward rather than abroad, yet even Srinagar's slackers wonder about their audience. "America has their own satellites. They're watching the whole world. Who knows, they may be listening to our conversation right now." So hopes Gandu's Gandu: "Gandu will get a red-carpet welcome on the streets of New York!" So worry the goons in With Love to Obama: "They'll send the F.B.I. after us." "You remember Saddam? Bush and Saddam had enmity for generations. The whole world tried to stop Bush, but he sent the F.B.I. after him. First Bush got him checked by a doctor, and then got him hanged." "He is an American, the news will reach Bush very soon!"

As the wall graffiti in Slackistan says, "NO MORE AMERICAN ENSLAVEMENT." As Mr. Khan said, "A film has to be local. It cannot be designed with the international film-festival market in mind." As the lusty outlaw dares the alabaster beauty in Raavanan, "Wander in the sun with us and turn dark like us." As the head gangster repeatedly admonishes his star-struck subordinate in With Love to Obama, in an untranslatable phrase that the subtitles render literally: "Take off your American ghost!" Easier said than done. As Ray said just after receiving a lifetime achievement Oscar and just before he died, "I have survived because of my foreign market. Without that I wouldn't have survived at all. I would have stopped making films and gone back to my old profession, advertising."

Mr. Kroll-Zaidi is the managing editor of Harper's Magazine.

Since Sunday nights are so crowded, you’ve probably let Bored to Death slip through the cracks. Good thing then for DVR and Monday night rebroadcasts! The HBO comedy, about a Brooklyn novelist-turned-private eye isn’t necessarily the funniest new show of the fall—that would be Community [Editor's note: Modern Family!]—but it’s certainly one of the most likeable. Blessed with a brilliant cast (Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson, and Zack Galifianakis) and razor sharp writing (courtesy of novelist and creator Jonathan Ames), Bored to Death is a series you really ought to be watching… if you could only find room in your schedule. [HBO2, 9:30 p.m.]

Tuesday: Slumdog Millionaire
We’re not sure what’s more surprising: that Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture or that it’s already airing on cable. The Little Movie That Did was (in our humble opinion) the most over-rated and undeserving Academy Award winner since Crash, however that doesn’t mean there aren’t riches to behold within. Come for the paint-by-numbers-yet-crowd-pleasing story that can manipulate even the most hardened skeptic; stay for the closing dance number, which ranks as one of the most jubilant moments from last year. [HBO, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: Beetlejuice
Halloween is still a couple of weeks away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a jump on the season with some classic Tim Burton-lead weirdness. Beetlejuice is that rare commodity: a great movie from our childhood that remains great to this day. We have Michael Keaton to thank for that, of course. He’s so caustic, angry and fantastic in the titular role, that we wish he would come out of whatever Witness Protection Program he’s been hiding in for the past few years. [ABC Family, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: Parks and Recreation
For those of you who stuck with Parks and Recreation after a lackluster first season, you’ve been rewarded during season two. Everything about the show—from the writing to the performances—has gotten exponentially better. The key has been distancing the proceedings from The Office in both tone and execution, while simultaneously allowing the fantastic cast a chance to breathe. And, oh what a cast! We’d put Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Rashida Jones, Paul Schneider, Nick Offerman and Aubrey Plaza up against the denizens of Dunder Mifflin and 30 Rockefeller Plaza any day of the week and twice on Thursday. [NBC, 8:30 p.m.]

Friday: Defending Your Life
You might not think that Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep would have great chemistry together, but that just means you probably haven’t seen Defending Your Life. Mr. Brooks’ ode to the afterlife is a twisted little sweet-and-sour romantic comedy made all the better because Ms. Streep has an absolute ball playing the pinnacle of shiksa perfection. If you’ve always thought Mr. Brooks was like a sunnier version of Woody Allen, Defending Your Life will do nothing to dissuade you from that opinion. [Starz, 9:25 a.m.]

We love a good round of blogosphere-led hand wringing, so the news that Vertigo Entertainment is planning a reboot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise totally tickles our fancy. Rather than include creator Joss Whedon or any of the beloved supporting characters he created for television, Vertigo is relying on the immortal Fran Rubel Kuzui, director of the long-forgotten original Buffy with Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry, to produce a film that “compliments” Mr. Whedon’s niche series. Think Star Trek, if J.J. Abrams kept Captain Kirk but replaced the crew of the Enterprise with some other dudes.

It goes without saying that this is a hilariously misguided idea, but it doesn’t seem worth the apoplectic reactions splattered about the web, specifically with regards to Mr. Whedon’s potential lack of involvement; as an intrepid blogger over at Entertainment Weekly put it: “Worst Idea Ever of the year!” Is it though? Mr. Whedon is talented, sure, but his absence from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie doesn’t necessarily mean it will, well, suck (pun most certainly intended!). Fact is, beyond the Buffy-verse, Mr. Whedon hasn’t done anything to warrant his status as a sacred cow; being one of four screenwriters on the original Toy Story is nice, but that achievement clearly gets canceled out by being the only writer for Alien Resurrection.

Anyway, all this got us thinking: Who are some other wildly overrated Hollywood commodities? Here are three of our favorites.

Danny Boyle

There was a meme running through the Oscar season last year which seemed to say that Danny Boyle was “due” for some Academy recognition. Come again? We love Trainspotting too, but this guy is not markedly better than other genre filmmakers in his peer group. And his work on Slumdog Millionaire felt like nothing more than warmed over Tony Scott. Needless to say, that is not a compliment.

James Cameron

Not even we can deny that the King of the World is one of the biggest directors ever: Aliens, T2, Titanic; any filmmaker would love to have one of those movies on their resume, let alone all three. The reason Mr. Cameron skates into the land of overrated, though, is because there seems to be this feeling amongst journalists and tastemakers that audiences are waiting with baited breath for what he does next. But by the time his 3-D-palooza, Avatar, is released in December, thirteen years will have passed from when Mr. Cameron ruled earth with Titanic. Does anyone even remember back that far? And, more important, did everyone forget that underneath all its technical prowess, Titanic was purely a mediocre melodrama?

Peter Jackson

We don’t think we’ve liked a Peter Jackson movie since The Frighteners. His laborious Lord of the Rings adaptations were bad enough, but what really pushes him over the top is King Kong. Here’s an idea, let’s take a fun creature feature and turn it into a three hour prestige picture. Ugh! Perhaps his take on The Lovely Bones, due in December, will fare better. At least in that film, we’ll be assured of seeing no ice skating giant apes.

The Material Girl took a tumble off a horse on Saturday afternoon, and since then Madonna's handlers have been saying a photographer that leapt out of the bushes to catch her riding spooked her horse, causing the fall. But the photographer they've fingered says he wasn't at the farm until 10 minutes after the fall happened. Either way, it's clear that tabloid photographers descended upon the Hamptons in droves after the accident, hoping to get some candid shots of the singer, and it appears that the News succeeded: Walking on the beach, she agreed to be photographed on her own; at unspecified times, according to the Post, she refused the same request of other photographers. So the News has a candid photo of Madonna that the other guys were trying to get: what to do? There's not much of a story here, is there? And yet, she looks so nutty in these pictures—at least, nutty for someone whose public image is normally so closely tended. You have to put it on the front. They crop in close to her face, which is looking a bit tired and windswept, tendrils of dyed-blond hair blowing like stale cornsilk across her distinctly unretouched visage. The headline? "LADY SINGS THE BRUISE." O.K.!

Even with this arguably "hot" photograph, though, the news is a bit thin on the ground on the Madonna story (the News had, after all, already devoted half its cover to Madonna's insignificant accident in the Sunday paper). So two little refer-boxes at the top: one proclaiming the Yankees' finally winning a game; the other an update on the developing "pension scandal" story, in which a "Clinton pal" is now named.

New York Post: First, a little background that puts our own "tabloid wars" in a bit of perspective. News of the World, the British tabloid that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and which is currently edited by Colin Myler, a former executive editor of the New York Post, got a tip a while back that the father of Rubina Ali, the child star of Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire, was looking to find an adoptive family for his daughter in an illegal cash transaction. The family is poor, and remains so even after the success of the film; the family's plight, documented on an Al Jazeera program, had prompted a family in Dubai to make inquiries about adopting the girl, and a source told News of the World that the offer had set Rafiq Qureshi, the girl's father, on a path of finding an even more generous offer to adopt the child from somewhere in the Middle East or the West. So News of the World reporters did what any journalists would do: They dressed up as a family of sheiks and made an offer, recording the interview for posterity. It's quite a tale, and no doubt the Post's connection to News of the World made it that much more of an obvious choice for the cover of the paper today: After all, promoting another newspaper's big scoop is easy enough when you've got the same owners. The headline even front-loads the "sting operation" itself: "'Scumdog' dad in girl for sale sting," the headline reads.

It's all about the kids in the Post this morning, in fact: The bottom of the page reads "KIDS LOSE: UFT killed bill and saved bad teachers." But better by far is the little photo illustration of United Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten, who is pictured manipulating the strings of the famous marionette Pinocchio (the Disney version) over the legend "PUPPET MASTER." This follows up on an April 8 cover treatment of Ms. Weingarten that read "PUPPET MASTERS," and was about something called a "shock charter ploy." No, we didn't figure that out, either. This time it's also difficult. It appears that Ms. Weingarten's staffers introduced language into a bill through statehouse staffers sometime last year that effectively removed the possibility of test scores being factored into tenure evaluations. This happened in "apparent violation" of a law that ordered the formation of a commission to investigate the use of test scores. More importantly, all of this happened about a year ago. What is newly discovered, and what was already known? The article, which is a coproduction of Albany wag Fred Dicker and reporter Chuck Bennett, isn't too clear on this point: "[In] in mid-March 2008, an operative from the UFT contacted mid-level budget staffers for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Bruno to insert a phrase into the budget that effectively eviscerated the tenure-reform effort.

'The union was claiming that the [phrase] would only clarify what was an already existing policy,' a Senate Republican insider said. 'It turned out to be much more than a clarification.'

At the end of the article, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is quoted from last year calling the whole thing "craziness," but it seems it is the result of this nefarous Puppet Master plotting he is reacting to; the news must be the actual tick-tock on how Ms. Weingarten got the job done. For which, incidentally, there are no apologies and no obvious cover-up. Ron Davis, a spokesman for Ms. Weingarten, tells the Post: "We forcefully advocated for the tenure language, and we make no apologies for this."

General observations: We've said before both that Randi Weingarten has a soporific effect on front pages, and that the issue of her leadership at the UFT and the ongoing struggles over school reform are a great topic for the tabloids. Today's outing looks pretty promising: You'll have had to plunk down your two bits already before you discover that you're not sure what the news is. Meanwhile, the smiling face of Rubina Ali is hard to refuse, looking pleadingly outward from her father's embrace at the reader just as though we, too, are dressed up as ersatz sheiks planning to adopt. (So much for that, Rubina. Looks like you're stuck with Dad now!) We're left now to consider the position of the Daily News. If you or someone you know ever, as a child, actually caught a pigeon, you know how weird it is: The impossible achieved, now you've got a dirty bird in your fingers, and no real idea what to do with it. Such, we imagine, is how the News must have felt about this Madonna picture. Of course you must go with it: This is a photo that the other guys tried and failed to get, so it scores a direct hit in the Tabloid War. It's just too bad there is so little story to go with the picture. The two refers up top of the page don't help much to lend substance to the cover. But Madonna's giant porous un-made-up face is sure to attract attention; it's really Madonna vs. Rubina Ali. How to choose? The Rubina Ali story has some real narrative to it, even if it is just lifted wholesale from a sister paper. The Madonna story, well, it's really just that the News got the picture. It's a close thing: We expect that the Madonna cover made the Post a little angry, and that is good. We'd applaud the ongoing UFT campaign for topicality, if the news didn't seem a bit old to deserve the kind of treatment it got today. The Rubina Ali story is just sad all around, and somehow seems to depend on the Post's access to a faraway tabloid battle that plays by its own set of rules; the News doesn't have a sister paper where people can dress up as sheiks and pretend to adopt a child star from the slums of Mumbai. All is fair in war, but the battle of photographers to get Madge in her natural state is a much bigger enterprise than any suggested by the Fake Sheikhs of Fleet Street. We're keeping this battle local.

Winner: Daily News.

Let’s start with the stage, with the 92,000-Swarovski-crystal curtain which looked like something that got thrown up straight from Moonstruck-era Cher’s brain - razzle dazle doesn’t begin to describe it. And then there’s Hugh Jackman. We’ve already heard a lot of dissenting chatter about the Aussie’s hosting duties, but we’re just going to come out and say it: nailed it! Because listen, that man committed. He went out there for his debut Oscar-hosting night and put on an opening number that we still actually can’t believe happened. He started, gracefully, with a self deprecating joke about his giant bomb of a film Australia and led into a song and dance number – including inspired bits encompassing the big five plus a much needed shout out to snubbed Dark Knight - that had that jaded crowd at the Kodak on their feet. Props to Anne Hathaway for a shockingly good faux impromptu assist (who knew she could sing?). But our favorite moment (not including Mr. Jackman pausing in front of Brad and Angelina and admitting, “I don’t have a joke for them, I’m just contractually obligated to mention them five times”) was when Mr. Jackman crawled on top of a Wrestler­-like ring and belted out, “Because I am Hugh Jackman!” It’s true! He is Hugh Jackman – and no recession can silence his song. Gosh, we might suddenly be in love with him – how many more days till Wolverine anyway?

And now, because we just can’t think of any other way to do this, here is a rundown of some of the highs and lows of the 81st Annual Academy Awards.

Best Supporting Actress: The powers-that-be promised us a whole new kind of Oscar show and with the first category this proved entirely true. Having past Supporting Actress winners onstage was lovely, and clearly unexpected even to the nominees. Tilda Swinton, Eva Marie Saint, Whoopie Goldberg, Goldie Hawn and Anjelica Houston stood up there and took the time to individually praise each of the nominees. Every single one of them – Viola Davis, Amy Adams, Taraji P. Henson, Marisa Tomei and winner Penélope Cruz (who gave a kick ass speech) looked downright misty, and it actually felt honest-to-god special. Nice work everyone! But, we did miss the film clips….call us traditionalists.

Tina Fey and Steve Martin: Our favorite presenters had to be Tina Fey (looking smokin’ hot!) and Steve Martin for the best writing awards. We could watch these two go back and forth (Fey: “They say that to write is to live forever”. Martin: “The man who wrote that is dead.”). Hey woah, was that bit about the tree and seeds and crazy alien kings a Scientology joke? We sure hope so!

Most Awkward Presentation: We know we can’t be the only one that was completely distracted during the animation awards with Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston standing, like, four feet away from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Eegads! Hope the evil overloads at ABC don't go for the easy pan to the happy couple…oh wait, too late.

Styx Shout out! Oh my, did Kunio Kato, winner of the best animated short really just say Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto? AWESOME. 

The curious case of Sarah Jessica Parker’s boobs: How come no one pulled the top of her dress up? Serious, serious spillage. Just not right at all.

Wacky, wacky love montage: There is no one alive who loves a montage the way we do. But…we’re so confused by this “Romance in 2008” mess! Was that Seven Pounds, Made of Honor, and What Happens in Vegas we saw in there? Really?

God we love James Franco: The bit between Seth Rogan and James Franco as their Pineapple Express The Reader and Doubt, making up a song about Mama Mia!, getting sentimental about Milk – all great. But add in cinemetographer Janusz Kaminski (“They made me do it, Mr. Spielberg. It’s really slow in town.”) rolling around on the couch watching You Don’t Mess With the Zohan and it’s even better.

Uber-weird second musical number: We were so with you Hugh Jackman! But then they made you do this other weird second musical montage-y performance piece. With Beyonce! You'd think we'd love it and yet, and yet...it was more than a little too much. Oh wait, it was dreamed up by Baz Luhrmann - yup, that explains everything.  

Zac Efron no mas!: We get that the High School Musical kid is some sort of big f'n deal. We don't care. We saw way way way too much of him during this Oscar show.  

Phillippe Petit in da house!: Man on Wire subject Philippe Petit certainly knows how to accept an award! Jumping around, doing magic, balancing a statue on his face. Bravo! 

Another amazing Tom Cruise cameo: Did you see the totally awesome chompers' "I don't have a cat" Jimmy Kimmel commercial? If not, YouTube it immediately. 

Oh no they didn't!: Nooooo Oscars no! Don't mess with the holy death montage! Having Queen Latifah singing through the montage did not work. It competed with the clips, which we couldn't really see anyway with all the zooming cameras.  Also, what's with there being zero sound? Bring back the snippets from the honoree's best work.

Best Actress: Wow….Sofia Loren…we don’t know what to say about how you look. But god, could we love Marion Cotillard and her tiny, tiny, waist any more? Kate Winslet couldn’t have been surprised, but we do love that her dad whistled for her from the darkened crowd.

Sean Penn knows he’s a jerk! “I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me – often.” Okay, that’s fair…and almost makes us love Sean Penn again. Also, not annoying this time around for an actor to use their time to make a political statement for equal rights for homosexuals. This was certainly the right Oscars for it.

Art Direction: Changeling, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, The Duchess, Revolutionary Road

With no Slumdog Millionaire to steal its thunder, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will happily win this award. And we guess it deserves to: Those teacups that Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton drank out of were pretty awesome, right?

Cinematography: Changeling, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire

For some unknown reason, everyone loves the work that Anthony Dod Mantle did on Slumdog Millionaire. Apparently when you steal equal parts of City of God and Man on Fire, you become a genius. Who knew? He'll win, but we still want a recount to find out why Harris Savides missed out on a nomination for Milk.

Costume Design: Austrailia, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Duchess, Milk, Revolutionary Road

We're tempted to select Benjamin Button here based on Cate Blanchett's red dress alone, but if we know Hollywood, they love an honest to goodness period piece. The giant dresses and constricting corsets of The Duchess are tailor made for this award (nyuck, nyuck).

Film Editing: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire

The Dark Knight is too long, and to say the fight scenes are somewhat difficult to follow would be kind. But! The action set piece that climaxes with an 18-wheeler flipping over is literally the film sequence of the year. On that alone, we think The Dark Knight takes this trophy home. Well, that and the fact that we didn't like Slumdog Millionaire.

Makeup: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II: The Golden Army

We loved Heath Ledger's Joker makeup and all, but in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, they made Cate Blanchett look scary old. Ladies and gentlemen, your winner!

Score: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Defiance, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Wall-E

We've been all over Alexandre Desplat's score from Benjamin Button for months. It manages to be both beautiful and timeless. Seriously, you'll be hearing this music in mawkish movie trailers for the next ten years.

Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Iron Man

In Iron Man they made Robert Downey Jr. fly. Cool enough. But in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher and his special effects wizards took Brad Pitt's face and digitally grafted it onto another body. Old man babies always top flying robot suits.

The Reader

My choice for Best Picture would be The Reader. I think it’s a magnificent film about little people with big experiences. It’s a movie that, at a time when movies are not about much of anything, is a very important film about how one generation pays the price for the sins of an older generation. And the generations meld through these intimate experiences. This is certainly true of America’s involvement in Vietnam. It’s true of all the things the Germans are asking of their elders: “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” I was very, very moved by it. There were two movies that moved me to tears and they were The Reader and Revolutionary Road, which is not nominated. But of the five films nominated, The Reader was the only one that really moved me to tears.

The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button

Benjamin Button is the most imaginative of all five nominated films. It’s the film that best utilizes all aspects of filmmaking: color, sound, special effects, acting, directing, script, cinematography—they all blend in that movie. With most movies you remember one performance and you don’t remember anything else. Or you think the script is really good but the movie was not up to the demands of the script. In Benjamin Button, everything works.

Milk

I think Milk is a movie you can admire without feeling really passionate about. It’s more like a newsreel but with a central performance by Sean Penn that keeps you interested. He’s wonderful in it. But the word is respectable. … I don’t feel anything about this film like how I do about The Reader and how I do about Revolutionary Road. … I will never ever understand why that was not nominated.

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is the film that will probably win, although I think it’s popular for all the wrong reasons—in any other year it would get swept under the carpet. This is the year that new, younger members of the Academy want to prove that less is more. They want little films with nobody anybody has ever heard of to win prizes. And preferably inexpensive films. And I love the way everybody thinks this is a happy movie. I was so depressed by it that I wanted to kill myself. I’m happy about the game show aspect of it, but the life that it depicts is miserable and the solution to making it better is preposterous. There’s no way that little boy would ever win that show! I mean, it’s a miserable world that they depict in that film, and everyone feels just great because it’s just so positive and he wins—he would never win. I didn’t believe that for one minute. Plus, there were people out to kill him! That’s not a happy movie … and that poor girl, what a life she has. … It’s awful for all of them. But I liked the film, I’m not saying I didn’t like it. I liked it because it was fresh. 

Frost/Nixon

That is a great example of opening up a play and making a claustrophobic subject bigger than it really is … with two central performances that make a perfect tennis match, you know? But is it a movie that I will remember years from now? No. I won’t remember it any more than I remember JFK or any of those movies about controversial people. I’m surprised it’s nominated. I would much rather have seen Revolutionary Road nominated than Frost/Nixon. Or even Wall-E! I mean … Frost/Nixon is not a best movie of the year. It’s a perfectly honorable attempt to open up a well-written play. Although I don’t think any of these movies are a disgrace. … Usually I just think they are out of their minds. I don’t think that this year. I think these are five worthy nominees. They are worthy; I just don’t think they are all equally great.

BEST DIRECTOR

I would give it to the man who directed Benjamin Button, David Fincher. I love David Fincher’s work—I always have. I’ve loved all of his movies, I think … unless he did Fight Club. He did? I hated that! That I didn’t like. Well, with the exception of Fight Club, I’ve liked his work … I’m crazy about Se7en.

BEST ACTOR

It should be a tie between Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke, though I think Sean Penn will probably win. I don’t know why, but he will. I certainly think as far as stretching body, mind, soul and intellectual capacity, Benjamin Button did that more for Brad Pitt than Milk did for Sean Penn. I think Mickey Rourke’s performance might be my choice even over Brad Pitt. But if ever there was a tie, it should be with Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke.

BEST ACTRESS

I think Kate Winslet should win for two movies, but she’s only nominated for one. I’d give it to her for The Reader. As for the others, there’s nobody even on the same planet as Kate Winslet. I hated Meryl Streep in Doubt. And I don’t know what happened with Cate Blanchett. She really was wonderful in Benjamin Button. I think they got all their Kates mixed up. Too many Kates. They got her mixed up with Kate Winslet, who was every bit as good in Revolutionary Road as she was in The Reader. But it would be a very bad thing to put her in a supporting category for either film because she didn’t support anybody. Leonardo DiCaprio deserved a nomination for doing the best work of his career. He was really good; it was his best work since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

[Revolutionary Road’s Michael Shannon] was very good. But I think this might be the posthumous award. I don’t think Heath Ledger deserves it at all. I think it was one of the most outrageously cornball performances I’ve ever seen. He chewed all the scenery and if he hadn’t died of what he died of, he would have died of asbestos poisoning—I mean that is truly a stupid performance. Overwrought and badly directed. I hated the movie and I didn’t like the performance at all. Josh Brolin in Milk was wonderful.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

I would probably give it to Viola Davis in Doubt, although it’s such a tiny part it almost seems ridiculous. I also liked Amy Adams. I thought she was the best person in Doubt. Penélope Cruz will win, but she’s not my choice.

svilkomerson@observer.com

It's official: 30 Rock wins every award ever.

We're always happy when 30 Rock gets recognition. But, enough already! 30 Rock took home awards for Best Actress (Tina Fey), Best Actor (Alec Baldwin) and Best Ensemble Cast in a Comedy Series (the SAG Awards' version of Best Comedy), giving the show roughly 143 awards during the past year. Put it this way: if 30 Rock had been eligible to win the MVP trophy at the NHL All-Star Game on Sunday night, we bet it would have won that, too. All that being said however, it was a treat to see 30 Rock win, just to hear Jane Krakowski's acceptance speech on behalf of the cast. Ms. Krakowski has wandered around the edges of 30 Rock since the show began, but at the SAG Awards she took center stage. Citing some of the cast members as "weirdoes we picked up off the street", specifically highlighting Jack McBrayer (who hilariously muttered "not cool" within ear shot of the microphone), was funny enough. But saying that the 30 Rock cast is "one thousand times heavier" than her former cast mates on Ally McBeal was sublime. We particularly loved how much she made Ms. Fey laugh. If only Ms. Krakowski was given material like that each week.

Forget Doubt! Can we give Meryl Streep an Oscar for her SAG Awards speech?

While it might seem pre-determined that this is Kate Winslet's year to break free from the unfortunate moniker of "best actress to never win an Oscar," it is never wise to bet against Queen Meryl. Ms. Streep defeated Ms. Winslet in the Best Actress category last night, taking home the hardware for her work in Doubt--though it was Ms. Winslet's performance in Revolutionary Road that lost and not her Oscar-nominated turn in The Reader (which incidentally won Best Supporting Actress honors from SAG). And though we feel Ms. Streep's performance gets better in our minds as time moves forward, we'd much rather see her get an award for the acceptance speech she unspooled in front of her fellow actors. Ms. Streep managed to be equal parts humble and conceited, while never uttering a false note. She's great, she knows she's great and she doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks. That is in stark contrast to Ms. Winslet's weepy speeches at the Golden Globes, and her underwhelming one earlier in the evening at the SAG Awards. Ms. Streep hasn't gotten an Oscar in twenty-seven years. Don't count her out come February 22nd.

It is written: Slumdog Millionaire has already won Best Picture.

While this does feel like one of the most wide-open Academy Awards races in quite some time, there is no doubt what film will win Best Picture. Slumdog Millionaire has captured the hearts of voters all over Hollywood and its dual wins over the weekend from the Producers Guild of America (Best Picture) and the Screen Actors Guild (Best Ensemble) cement things further. Slumdog Millionaire is a juggernaut the likes of which we haven't seen since... No Country for Old Men. Sigh. Seriously, just once we'd like to see a Best Picture race where the outcome wasn't already decided months in advance. Maybe next year...

Best Picture: Gran Torino ethnically slurs its way to the Kodak Theater!

No matter what site you refer to, almost everyone assumes the five Best Picture nominees will be Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon and The Dark Knight. And, as the story goes, if there is one film perilously close to being knocked off, it's Batman's. With due respect though, doesn't it seem like The Dark Knight is the one sure lock outside of Slumdog Millionaire? After receiving notices from all three major guilds--Producers, Writers and Directors--plus a slew of technical nominations almost guaranteed, The Dark Knight isn't only safe in the Best Picture category, but lined up to have the most nominations of any picture... period. With Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button and Milk all also firmly ensconced, that leaves Frost/Nixon as the lone vulnerable choice. Like The Dark Knight, Ron Howard's film scored a trifecta of guild nominations, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of other support beyond the rote assumption that Frost/Nixon will "just be there." Gran Torino, on the other hand, is a box office smash, and features the beloved Clint Eastwood. After Million Dollar Baby stole the Oscars in 2005, we've learned never to count Clint out. Expect to see him in the final five. Sorry, Opie.

Best Supporting Actor/Actress: Don't Sleep on Slumdog Millionaire's kid stars!

Slumdog Millionaire is the prohibitive favorite to win Best Picture, but its stars, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto, have only barely been discussed as possible nominees. What gives? In recent years, we've seen out-of-nowhere supporting nominees from Best Picture winners Chicago (John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah) and Crash (Matt Dillon). Why can't Slumdog Millionaire accomplish the same feat? Though Mr. Patel's performance is certainly a lead, Fox Searchlight has been campaigning him for Supporting Actor. That's fine; he joins both Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Sheen as lead actors attempting to moonlight in the easier supporting category. The object of Mr. Patel's on-screen affection, Ms. Pinto, hasn't generated much heat at all while vying for a spot in the very competitive Best Supporting Actress race. However if we know the Oscars, they'll find a way to get her pretty new face into the starting gate. Robert Downey, Jr. and Kate Winslet should start getting worried.

Best Director: The Jonathan Demme Lifetime Achievement Nomination!

Only once in the last ten years have the five Best Picture nominees lined up with the five Best Director nominees (the 2006 ceremony when Crash won). And though both the Producers and Directors Guilds were in lockstep with their nominations, we still smell an upset. Usually the fifth slot goes to a real director's director with no chance of winning--someone like Atom Egoyan, Mike Leigh or Julian Schnabel. Mr. Leigh, a two-time nominee in this category, could sneak in again for Happy-Go-Lucky, but we think it's more likely that Jonathan Demme gets rewarded for his talky, Altman-esque work in Rachel Getting Married. When it was released last October, Rachel Getting Married was the belle of the ball and on its way to a slew of awards. Now, it's barely being mentioned beyond Anne Hathaway. But Mr. Demme has a lot of fans amongst his peers and hasn't been nominated since 1992, when he won for Silence of the Lambs. He's due for some recognition.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D

What's the story: Because you've always wanted to see a slasher film in 3-D, here comes My Bloody Valentine. It seems like one of these movies that comes out each week, but My Bloody Valentine sounds particularly stupid. In it, a crazed miner terrorizes a small town by killing a bunch of teenagers with a pickaxe. Seriously. Jamie King stars, fresh off the disaster that was The Spirit. It might be time for her to find a new agent.

Who should see it: People who want to see a pickaxe thrown into their face.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

What's the story: Kevin James has always been "kinda funny"; Hitch, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and even his long-running sit-com, The King of Queens, all contained spells of passable humor. But the problem with being "kinda funny" is that, inevitably, you make a stinker. Paul Blart: Mall Cop, come on down! As you can tell from the very literal title, Mr. James stars as a New Jersey mall cop who must stop a bunch of criminals from taking over his mall. Wake us when it's over.

Who should see it: Security personnel at the Paramus Park Mall.

Hotel for Dogs

What's the story: Speaking of literal titles... Hotel for Dogs is about a hotel for dogs. The surprising thing in this kids movie is the cast of adults: Kevin Dillon, Lisa Kudrow and Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle. Which of those three doesn't belong?

Who should see it: Mickey Rourke.

Notorious

What's the story: No, it's not a reissue of the Alfred Hitchcock classic. But Notorious happens to be the one movie that might be worth checking out this weekend. Newcomer Jamal Woolard stars as The Notorious B.I.G. in this Behind the Music-style biopic about the life and death of the rotund rapper. The trailer is fantastic, as it manages to squeeze in "Notorious B.I.G.", "Juicy" and, of course, "Hypnotize", within a span of two minutes. Just imagine what the movie can do in two hours! Derek Luke co-stars as Puff Daddy in a performance that seems to be all dance moves and fur coats, while the inimitable Angela Bassett takes on the role of Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. Call it a hunch, but we have a feeling this film surprises everyone and makes a small fortune before its run is over.

Who should see it: Everyone who went to college in the 90s.