It's Academy Awards season, and whether you're planning to hit a viewing party at the Roxie, the Balboa, the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, or your Meryl Streep-obsessed BFF's apartment, it's best to show up prepared. Especially when there's a pool going.

Best Picture (and Best Director)
Black-and-white silent charmer The Artist has emerged as the clear front-runner, with copious wins at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Director's Guild of America, and the Producer's Guild of America, plus a Golden Collar Award for the film's charismatic canine co-star. I honestly can't think of another movie that could step up at this point; dwindling threats The Help and The Descendants will have to find glory in other categories. Look for The Artist's Michel Hazanavicius to pick up Best Director, too, unless Martin Scorsese scores an upset for Hugo. (He won't.)

Best Actor
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's Gary Oldman is my pick, but I also wanted L.A. Confidential to beat Titanic in 1998. Wasn't gonna happen then, won't happen now. It's a suave-off between The Artist's Jean Dujardin, who's been raking in kudos for his performance since Cannes 2011, and The Descendants' George Clooney, a previous winner in the Supporting Actor category (for 2006's Syriana). Clooney is also nominated for his adapted screenplay for The Ides of March, which he directed. Close call, but look for The Artist tsunami to carry Dujardin to the podium. Consolation for Clooney: he'll be nominated again. And again. And again.

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“City of Lost Souls” at ATA, and “Awkward Dinner Party” at the EXIT Theatre, subverted the Valentine spirit.

Talk about a hot mess. The florid, fluid, City of Lost Souls (1983), Rosa von Praunheim’s seldom-screened, "transgendered ex-pat food-fight sex-circus musical extravaganza" begins with a motley cast of unapologetic misfits sweeping up a trashed-out Berlin burger joint, the “Hamburger Königin” (Burger Queen). Shimmying on the counter, falling out of her lingerie, punk rock’s first transwoman cult darling, Jayne County, belts out “The Burger Queen Blues” while her fellow wage slaves, Loretta (Lorraine Muthke), Gary (Gary Miller), and Joaquin (Joaquin La Habana) gyrate suggestively across the linoleum until the boss-lady, Angie Stardust (as herself), a regal, “old school” transsexual wrapped in an enormous fur coat, curtails their goofy antics with a whistle and megaphone.

In stern German she orders them back to work—preparing for the next round of abusive food fights, which characterize the “service” at her uniquely unappetizing restaurant. A Theatre of the Ridiculous-style foray into the secret lives of gender outlaw ex-pats in flirty, dirty Berlin, “Lost Souls” isn’t your typical romance—but it’s a love story all the same.

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At the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Kevin Smith created one of festival's biggest sensations for audiences and film buyers alike by announcing he was going to auction off his film Red State after its world premiere screening.

Added to that, the hate-spreading publicity junkies known as the Westboro Baptist Church announced they would be staging a protest in front of the event with their usual "GOD HATES FAGS" signs, which in turn inspired Smith to stage his own protest of the Kansas-based church as a self-proclaimed "FAG ENABLER," which in turn inspired hundreds of people from Park City to make their own signs. Tickets to the movie were rumored to have been scalped for close to a thousand dollars, and the buzz surrounding the situation was truly something I have rarely felt at Sundance.

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In a series of posts, Midnites for Maniacs curator-host and Academy of Art film-history teacher Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports on the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Check out his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh entries.
 
No film at this year's festival encountered as much controversy as Craig Zobel's Compliance. At the first public screening, an all-out shouting match erupted, with an audience member yelling "Sundance can do better!" You can't buy that kind of publicity. Every screening (public and press) that followed was jam-packed with people hoping to experience the most shocking film at Sundance, and the film does not disappoint. (Beware: every review I have happened upon has unnecessarily spoiled major plots in the film, which is based on true events.)

What is so impressive about Zobel's film is how it builds up a sense of ever-impending terror. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the film steps into Psycho (1960) terrain, specifically in the final act of the film. Compliance aims to confront a society filled with people who are trained to follow rules without questioning them. Magnolia Pictures, which previously collaborated with Zobel on his debut film Great World of Sound (which premiered at Sundance in 2007), picked up the film for theatrical release; if you dare to check it out, prepare to be traumatized. You'll be screaming about one of the most audacious movies of 2012 — and that's exactly why the film is so brilliant.

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