Maxwell Nominees, Pt. 5: The Golden Maxwells (Movies)

Note: As there were not enough animated films to fill the animation category, I have given the untaken slots to the drama category, because these are my awards, and nobody really cares, anyway.

Best Film, Documentary

Cropsey

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

The Lottery

Mugabe and the White African

Restrepo

The Two Escobars

Waiting for Armageddon

Waiting for Superman

Winnebago Man

Best Film, Animated

Despicable Me

How to Train Your Dragon

Idiots and Angels

The Illusionist

Megamind

The Secret of Kells

Tangled

Toy Story 3

Best Film, Genre

Black Swan

Inception

Iron Man 2

Let Me In

Red

Salt

Shutter Island

Splice

The Town

Unstoppable

Film, Comedy

The Concert

Easy A

Greenberg

I Love You Phillip Morris

The Kids Are All Right

The Other Guys

Please Give

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Solitary Man

True Grit

Film, Drama

Animal Kingdom

Another Year

Blue Valentine

I Am Love

The King's Speech

Mother

A Prophet

The Social Network

The Square

Vincere

White Material

Winter’s Bone

Maxwell Nominees, Pt. 4: Actors

Best Supporting Actor, Genre

Tom Hardy, Inception

Nicolas Cage, Kick-Ass

Richard Jenkins, Let Me In

Brian Cox, Red

John Malkovich, Red

Best Supporting Actress, Genre

Barbara Hershey, Black Swan

Mila Kunis, Black Swan

Marion Cotillard, Inception

Cate Blanchett, Robin Hood

Daphne Chaneac, Splice

Best Leading Actor, Genre

Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception

Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man 2

Kodi Smit-McPhee, Let Me In

Leonardo Dicaprio, Shutter Island

Mads Mikkelsen, Valhalla Rising

Best Leading Actress, Genre

Mia Wasikowska, Alice in Wonderland

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Cameron Diaz, Knight and Day

Angelina Jolie, Salt

Sarah Polley, Splice

Best Ensemble, Genre

Black Swan

Inception

Salt

Shutter Island

Splice

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy

Jonah Hill, Cyrus

Rhys Ifans, Greenberg

Ewan McGregor, I Love You Phillip Morris

Oliver Platt, Please Give

Matt Damon, True Grit

Best Supporting Actress, Comedy

Greta Gerwig, Greenberg

Ann Guilbert, Please Give

Rebecca Hall, Please Give

Catherine Keener, Please Give

Amanda Peet, Please Give

Best Leading Actor, Comedy

Ben Stiller, Greenberg

Jim Carrey, I Love You Phillip Morris

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

Michael Douglas, Solitary Man

Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Best Leading Actress, Comedy

Emma Stone, Easy A

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right

Rachel McAdams, Morning Glory

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Best Ensemble, Comedy

Greenberg

The Kids Are All Right

Please Give

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

True Grit

Best Supporting Actor, Drama

Ben Mendelsohn, Animal Kingdom

Christian Bale, The Fighter

Niels Arestrup, A Prophet

Michael Shannon, The Runaways

John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Best Supporting Actress, Drama

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Lesley Manville, Another Year

Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Anne-Marie Duff, Nowhere Boy

Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone

Best Leading Actor, Drama

Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Robert Duvall, Get Low

Colin Firth, The King’s Speech

Tahar Rahim, A Prophet

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Best Leading Actress, Drama

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

Kim Hye-ja, Mother

Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Vincere

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone

Best Ensemble, Drama

Animal Kingdom

Another Year

The Fighter

The Social Network

Winter’s Bone

Maxwell Nominees, Pt. 3: Characters & Specialized Performances

The Silver Chewbacca (Best Sidekick)

Arthur, Inception

Eames, Inception

James Coughlin, The Town

LaBoeuf, True Grit

Teardrop, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Atticus (Best Hero)

Olive Penderghast, Easy A

Micky Ward, The Fighter

Rita O’Grady, Made in Dagenham

Mattie Ross, True Grit

Ree Dolly, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Chigurh (Best Villian)

Janine Cody, Animal Kingdom

Pope Cody, Animal Kingdom

César Luciani, A Prophet

Benito Mussolini, Vincere

Merab, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Washizu (Best Antihero)

Dicky Eklund, The Fighter

Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Mother, Mother

Malik, A Prophet

Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network

The Silver Mifune (For Achievement in the Field of Badassery)

Malik, A Prophet

Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network

Mattie Ross, True Grit

One Eye, Valhalla Rising

Ree Dolly, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Cage (Most Over-the-Top Performance)

Sharlto Copely, The A-Team

Willem Dafoe, Daybreakers

Kevin Weisman, Flipped

Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here

John Malkovich, Jonah Hex

The Silver Baldwin (Best Performance in a Small Role)

Eli Wallach, The Ghost Writer

Jennifer Jason-Leigh, Greenberg

Pete Postlethwaite, The Town

Dakin Matthews, True Grit

Russel A. Schalk, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Olivier (Best Monologue)

Ian McShane, 44 Inch Chest

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Robert Duvall, Get Low

Sally Hawkins, Never Let Me Go

Russel A. Schalk, Winter’s Bone

The Silver Tracey/Hepburn (Best Pair)

Jim Broadbent & Ruth Sheen, Another Year

Ryan Gosling & Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Christian Bale & Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

Niels Arestrup & Tahar Rahim, A Prophet

John Hawkes & Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone

Maxwell Nominees, Pt. 2: Scenes, etc.

The Silver Keitel (Best Male Nudity)

Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Martin Compston, The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

Sergi Lopez, Leaving

Filippo Timi, Vincere

The Silver Bardot (Best Female Nudity)

Violante Placido, The American

Amanda Seyfried, Chloe

Gemma Arterton, The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Greta Gerwig, Greenberg

Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Vincere

The Silver Bertolucci (Best Love Scene)

Black Swan

Blue Valentine

Greenberg

I Am Love

Vincere

The Silver Bruce Almighty (Most Pleasant Surprise Relative to Expectations)

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Easy A

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Let Me In

Salt

The Silver Herzog (Greatest Ambition)

Black Swan

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Inception

A Prophet

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Silver Kurosawa (Best Action Scene)

Desert Chase, The Good the Bad the Weird

Stadium Chase, The Secret in Their Eyes

Nun Robbery, The Town

Playtime, Toy Story 3

Rooster’s Charge, True Grit

The Silver Scorsese (Best Fight)

Ward/Sanchez, The Fighter

Arthur/Projection, Inception

Stark/Whiplash at the racetrack, Iron Man 2

Malik/Prisoner, A Prophet

One Eye/Two Vikings, Valhalla Rising

The Silver Chaplin (Best Shot)

Birds Pass Overhead, The Exploding Girl

Arthur Runs Up the Hallway Wall, Incepton

Seeing the Leaves, Please Give

Sheep in Town, Sweetgrass

Child Soldiers Sleeping, White Material

The Silver Crowe (Best Use of Music in a Scene)

Without You, 44 Inch Chest

All Out of Love, Animal Kingdom

You Always Hurt the Ones You Love, Blue Valentine

Mack the Knife, A Prophet

Cherry Bomb, The Runaways

The Silver Wilder (Best Ending)

Black Swan

Inception

Mother

A Prophet

Toy Story 3

The Silver Dassin (Best Visual Scene)

Act III, Black Swan

Dancing, Fish Tank

Tasting, I Am Love

Golf Club, Mother

Incinerator, Toy Story 3

The Silver Welles (Best Dialog Scene)

Mary Meets Katie, Another Year

Birthday Party, Please Give

Break-up, The Social Network

Trading Ponies, True Grit

Asylum Interview, Vincere

Maxwell Nominees Pt. 1: The Awards of Dubious Merit

The Silver Caine (Best Performance in a Bad Movie)

Michael Caine, Harry Brown

Joaquin Phoenix, I’m Still Here

Vanessa Redgrave, Letters to Juliet

Michael Shannon, The Runaways

Michael Douglas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The Silver Phantom Menace (Biggest Disappointment)

44 Inch Chest

Chloe

Harry Brown

Hereafter

The Wolfman

The Silver Jar Jar (Worst Character)

Stewart, The Bounty Hunter

Clay, The Kids Are All Right

Sasha, The Kids Are All Right

Aang, The Last Airbender

Josh Randall, Love and Other Drugs

The Silver Bennifer (Worst Pair)

Jennifer Aniston & Gerard Butler, The Bounty Hunter

Tracy Morgan & Bruce Willis, Cop Out

Josh Brolin & Megan Fox, Jonah Hex

Christopher Egan & Amanda Seyfried, Letters to Juliet

Emily Blunt & Benicio Del Toro, The Wolfman

The Golden Keanu (Worst Performance)

Quinton Jackson, The A-Team

Gerard Butler, The Bounty Hunter

Aasif Mandvi, The Last Airbender

Dev Patel, The Last Airbender

Noah Ringer, The Last Airbender

The Golden Uwe (Worst Film)

After.Life

The Bounty Hunter

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

The Last Airbender

The Wolfman

I'm Back

Well, I said there would be gaps of inactivity, and six months counts as a gap, but I'm back now. Tomorrow evening, I will be posting the nominees for the 2010 Maxwell Film Awards, because I have better taste than AMPAS. Going forward, I will do my best to post something at least once every two weeks, even if it's just a collection of links.

It's good to be back.

Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 2: “You’re the kind of man who doesn’t want to take the test.”

Alan Sepinwall

I cringed mightily watching Don pull Allison to her, and then seeing her reciprocate. As I've talked about before, being Don Draper's secretary is not easy. Peggy was okay but mostly distracted by personal issues (she's a better protege than Gal Friday), Joan great but temporary, Lois a disaster, and Jane more interested in finding a Sterling Cooper partner to sleep with. We've seen with Allison - and were reminded early in this episode with Sally's letter to Santa - that she's that rare creature who can meet Don's professional needs, understand his moods and perform her demanding job with a minimum of drama (though she does understandably get choked up at the postscript to Sally's letter). Allison is probably the most functional relationship Don has in his life right now (Peggy still is a target for abuse, after all), so when Don pulled her towards the couch, I all but begged them to stop before he screwed it up.

But bad as I expected things to go, I never expected anything quite as horrible as Don's behavior the next morning, when he shocks Allison with how much their encounter didn't happen, as far as he was concerned, then hands her the envelope with her holiday bonus. Dick Whitman, who grew up with the nickname "whore-son," is so fixated on keeping his personal life walled off from his professional life that he makes Allison feel like his whore. He doesn't close the door and apologetically suggest their night together was nice but a bad idea in hindsight; he just acts like it never happened and gives her a hundred bucks, cash. And unlike some other incidents where we see that Don's weird pathology allows him to forget about the thing that he wants to erase - see, for instance, his initial confusion when Peggy asks him to repay her for the bail money from the car crash with Bobbie Barrett - his expression after a humiliated Allison leaves his office makes it abundantly clear that Don knew exactly what he was doing and feels guilty about it. Just not guilty enough to have stopped himself.

This is among the lowest things we've ever see Don do, down there with ordering Adam out of his life and saying "you people" to Sal. We understand by now Don's need to push people away at all costs, and in hindsight it's not surprising that he would treat Allison in a way that ensures she would never, ever approach him that way again, nor tell anyone else about an encounter that ultimately mortified her so. That doesn't make it any easier to watch, though, and it's a credit to Matthew Weiner (here writing the script with Tracy McMillan) and Jon Hamm that they'll take the character there, and to Alexa Allemanni's acting that we'd feel so badly for such a minor character.

Tim Goodman

Now, instead of a lonely, disillusioned kid, Glen is more aggressively odd kid. He sees Sally at a Christmas tree farm, dumps a bunch of cold, hard facts on her about divorced parents, then says he'll call her (which he does, twice, before ransacking her place with another young accomplice). Only Freud can delve into that one, but there seemed to be a lot of misplaced sexual aggression. And the same might be said - with a lot more grown-up themes like dominance - about Lee Garner Jr.'s return to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He did more than just flaunt his power at the office Christmas party. He turned cruel and sadistic. (Sal, you're better off wherever you are.)

"It all comes down to what I want versus what's expected of me," cites Dr. Faye Miller, the smart, beautiful researcher who understands the psychology of demographics. Don didn't really buy her psycho babble, but agreed after that line that she was right. And she certainly nailed Don in one sentence. He's always battled what he wants and what's expected of him. He can't seem to find happiness. Or, more importantly, love.

S.T. Vanarisdale

At least Peggy has some dignity. Or whatever it is you call her shielding her sexual history from handsy boyfriend Mark, whose efforts to relive Peggy of her “virginity” bear rather smug, revolting fruit later in the episode. Her nooners with Duck Phillips were so much more rewarding, interruptions via presidential assassination notwithstanding.

Her professional tangles with Freddy, meanwhile, have their own implications. They’re fairly on-the-nose, stock Mad Men gender politics — Freddy wants an aging female star for the Pond’s campaign, Peggy wants to skew the demographics younger, Freddy stereotypes (“You might get married!”), Peggy stereotypes back (“You and your old typewriters and your desperate spinsters!”) — but their resolution suggests Peggy is indeed the superior politician. That’s quite the rebound from last week, when her creative wiles gave us the infamous Sugarberry Ham Brawl of 1964.

And it’s definitely a step ahead of virtually everyone else in the office. There was no more glaring evidence than the Christmas party — I mean, did you see Lee Garner Jr. whip Roger into playing Santa Claus? Or Lane’s desperate trawl for approval when giving Lee his gift Polaroid? Or the emasculated husbands in a circle, supplemented by Don, whose plunging creds have already been established? It’s true that Joan, with Peking House on speed-dial and her fierce conga-line leadership, wields the more redoubtable authority. But in her cagey, modulated (and sure, occasionally false-modest) way, Peggy slashes through one Y-chromosome after another in her march through the Testosterone River Delta.

Keith Phipps

Mad Men doesn’t use songs accidentally and it especially doesn’t end episodes with carelessly chosen songs. It’s always puzzled me that “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” became a holiday standard. That doesn’t mean it’s not a great song. But, unlike most Christmas songs, it’s not a song for kids. In fact, it’s a song that essentially mocks kids for believing in Santa. There are probably ways to explain its lyrics to children who still believe in Santa, but they involve piling a lie on top of another lie.

A songwriter named Tommie Conner—who penned several other Christmas songs and something called “Never Do A Tango With An Eskimo”—wrote it in 1952 and a kid named Jimmy Boyd, who went on to enjoy a fairly long career in show business, recorded it that same year. It was a hit again years later for the Jackson 5, as fronted by a young Michael Jackson. But there’s another tradition of versions by grown-ups, like the sexy Ronettes version on Phil Spector’s Christmas album and the one that closes out this week’s episode. I’m not sure who’s singing the version here—maybe country singer Molly Bee—but like most versions performed by adults, it takes on a different meaning in a grown-up voice. Listening to it requires buying into the illusion of an adult singing from a child’s perspective while still recognizing that it’s not a child singing at all. It means believing an illusion and recognizing the truth at the same time.

That double consciousness must be familiar to ad execs, who have to create a fantasy to sell a product and, to some degree at least, believe that fantasy for it to work. It’s a state of mind that creeps into private lives as well.

Me

• Roger Sterling has fantastic taste in dresses.
• A bit of a reversal for Roger: after goading Joan into wearing the red dress that "makes (Joan) look like a present," he is forced by Lee Garner, Jr. to put on the red Santa Claus suit. Given what we know about the characters, it is safe to assume that there was a sexual overtone to both events, but whereas with Roger it seems playful, Lee comes off as a sadistic creep. behold the power of tone.
• Harry Crane doesn't want anybody cheating off of his personality test. Also, he LOVES cookies.
• Freddy Rumsen is back! Let the zipper chorus commence its 1964 season. Is it too much to hope for a rendition of "A Hard Day's Night?" Of course, this being Mad Men, the first thing anyone does is to offer him a drink.
• Lee Garner, Jr. is the human manifestation of the perils of having all your eggs in one basket.
• Betty might want to have "the talk" with Sally. If she doesn't, the burden of explanation is likely to be shouldered by Glen.
• The next five years are going to hit Bert Cooper like a freight train.
• I cannot wait for Sally Draper's inevitable hippie rebellion (good band name).
• "Did you enjoy the Fuhrer's birthday?" "May he live for a thousand years!"
• "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
• More Joan, please.