Time to Award the Tyeeies!

Brokeback wins big. Everyone goes homo happy.

There, I have just saved you almost three hours of your life. It is time that can be better spent elsewhere, anyway. The Oscars are not really about shocking surprises; the days of nude men and David Niven are far behind us. (At least that's what Mr. Niven said, but that's a whole other brokeback moment.) Which is why we here at The Tyee, we want you to look at the overlooked films, films with not a hope in hell of ever picking up a bald statuette-cum-sex-toy. Yes, ladies and extremely gentle men it's that time again, Tyeeie time! The moment when we bestow the most esteemed of awards on films that are simply begging for it. (Find last year's winners here.)

Best Use of a Stunt Penis

Although Vincent Gallo may be the all-time champ, having purportedly borrowed a stunt wiener from Catherine Breillat for his star turn in Brown Bunny, this year, the award must go to Michael Glawogger in Slugs. This priapic director took a much deserved break from depressing everyone to death with Workingman's Death and gave us a nice light-hearted romp featuring the star of the show -- the biggest, most neon pink appendage that ever came out of a Korean sweatshop.

Since sex seems to have wandered into the land of drear, and to be unable to find its way home again, it was nice to see a good old fashioned take on "sex as comedy." Special mention must be given to the giant worm that gave exceptionally bad head to people's heads in Peter Jackson's giant dong of a King Kong.

Best Performance by a Dead Actor

Julio César Cedillo, who played Melquiades Estrada in Tommy Lee Jones' new film, is truly to be commended, not just for his uniquely greenish hue, but also for his ability to swallow what looks to be about 10 gallons of antifreeze. Now, that is some method acting. Soon enough, the Hoffmans, Pacinos and de Niros will be lining up to play dead. Kudos should also be awarded to the stunning wax work of one Paris Hilton, who was dead from the neck up, even before she got decapitated in House of Wax. One knife in Paris, indeed.

Supporting Actresses, Best

If you prefer your women a little less dead in the head, this wasn't a good year for you. Dumbos and dingbats abounded and serious roles were hard to find even for the biggest of girls in Wholly Wood. Unless you are Judy Dench, a hooker or a man, pickings were slim enough to warrant a slew of articles bemoaning, where'd the girls go? But no think piece had quite the same visual aplomb as the billboard erected at the corner of Sunset & Cahuenga in Hollywood, featuring a large, and very angry, Guerilla Girl.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden, things were a'changin'. The Doris Network, founded in 1999 in Gothenburg, Sweden, by a group of women film workers from every level -- from producers to film students, has stated its purpose with a pull-no-punches manifesto "In these times when it is politically incorrect to discuss the male dominance within the film industry, it is liberating when somebody stops talking and actively does something about it." With that in mind, The Doris Awards, named after Doris Day, aim to do right by female filmmakers and put its money where others simply mouth platitudes.

Even more Swedish goodness was featured at the recent Guldbagge Awards, where director Lena Einhorn's film Nina's Journey, about her own mother's experiences in World War II won best film and best screenplay. First Ikea and now this? You're too much, Sweden. Meanwhile, around the globe, other women directors such as Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, River of Grass), not to mention Isabella Rossellini, Jennifer Reeves, Claire Denis, Lynne Ramsay, Agnès Varda and Sally Potter untied the women of the world and let them run fancy-free.

Best Retrospective by Someone you have Probably Never Heard of

Mikio Naruse shall hereafter be given the title of "honorary woman." The Pacific Cinémathèque in Vancouver just finished up an extensive retrospective of his work and Naruse's films are utterly absorbing in their honesty. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a case in point. A woman seeks to change her life, but whatever way she turns, there is no escape.

Examples of the shomin-geki genre, Naruse's work are concerned with aging geishas, abandoned wives and struggling bar hostesses. There is a great deal of compassion here, not unlike what African director Ousame Sembene talked about in his own portrayal of the daily courage of ordinary women in Moolaadé. Despite their inability to escape the sad facts of their lives, there is something remarkably brave about Naruse's characters.

The films are striking for their spare and unsentimental approach, stripped of artifice and without the glossy fetishization of later filmmakers. These are remarkably clear-eyed portraits of women who are trying to be happy, who are fragile and tough and who only know how to keep on keeping on.

They Torture Americans, Don't They?

Eli Roth gives me hives, but the Americans got what is coming to them in Hostel: beaten, and sexually tortured for what seems an unutterably long time, but you can't help but give a tiny little cheer when obnoxious Yankee doodles get done. Who hasn't wanted to torture frat boys, after all? Although the Slavs have voiced complaints that Mr. Roth has painted them in a bad light, (a rather dark ill-lit one) Roth appears undaunted (someone please daunt this man) and is preparing to film the sequel, Hostler with a Vengeance (The Slavs Strike Back!)

Best Cautionary Tale about Being a Rockstar

Townes Van Zandt died a couple of times, had all his teeth knocked out with a ball peen hammer, after he glued his mouth shut sniffing airplane glue, but things could have been far rougher, he could have been Rip Torn. The musician's life, be it fictional or non, makes for a good story. The Cinémathèque in Vancouver is running Be Here to Love Me, and two blocks over Forty Shades of Blue is playing at the Film Centre. The Cinémathèque is also bringing to town an entire slew of demented rock star stories in April with Big Smash. Organized by the indefatigable Kier-la Janisse, (late of CineMuerte) this will convince you that you must never let your children pick up a guitar, EVER.

Best Theatre in Vancouver

Every time I go to the Paramount Theatres on Burrard, I feel like stripping off all my clothes and burning something. There is only despair there for the empty vacuum that makes up so much of modern culture. But despair ye not, there is hope only a few blocks over in the Vancouver International Film Centre. With the Ridge and the Vogue gone, push your way past the Yaletown people with their huge breasts and small dogs that crap on every available surface and line up for the deep red velvet of The VanCity Theatre. You will see films that will amaze and astound you.

On Tuesday, March 7, the film centre presents John Cassavetes' final film Love Streams, with a pre-show talk by the ever-lovely Tom Charity (author of Cassavetes: Lifeworks). The old adage that they simply don't make them like this anymore couldn't be truer of this late work. You may come staggering out the theatre, feeling as if you'd been obliterated, beaten and smacked around. But whatever you do, don't see it alone, like I did, sitting in an empty theatre, in the dark. By the end of the movie, reality became seriously unhinged; on screen and off. The Shaw Brothers (Heroic Grace series) is another once in a life time experience at the VanCity Theatre, so don't waste any more time on inferior offerings, leap over the ladies and their pooing pooches and land lightly on the side of goodness.

Big Mack Daddy Tyeeie Award

Sir John Tavener, writing about William Blake, said "Today, we live in a culture in ruins. We, with our pathetic, ego-centred imaginations can conceive of neither source nor symbol. For everything that lives is holy," wrote Blake. "Awake! Awake O sleeper of the land of shadows. Wake! Expand!"

This is what we want, ultimately, from films, that they will peel back our sleeping eyes and dazzle us with the light so profoundly bright that we will be transported somewhere entirely new. We don't get it very often, but when it comes, it comes hard; like love, it wrecks us and leaves us wanting more. There have been a few moments, here and there, but they didn't largely come from any Oscar contenders. Certainly not Crash, or North Country. They came charging in glorious cinemascope from the gorgeous animal that was a Brigitte Bardot behind a submachine gun in Louis Malle's dementedly fun Viva Maria! Or they came in sideways, and cut you off at the knees like the quotidian beauty of Touch the Sound. Or sometimes, they simply snatched you away so fast, you didn't even had time to squeak as in The Great Yokai War.

Oddly enough, one of the lines that have stuck with me is a few words from Larry Weinstein's Mozartballs, a documentary about the effects of one Wolfgang Amadeus on various oddballs, from a suicidally depressed ex-school teacher to Austria's first astronaut. One of the film's protagonists is David Cope, a professor who has written a computer program that will compose symphonies in the style of Mozart.

Mr. Cope defends his hobby saying that the one thing that music can do is make us feel noble, if just for an instant, one moment of transcendence. It reminded me of being a child, with a walkman about the size of a small car strapped my side, climbing cherry trees to pick fruit on a sunny summer mornings, feeling the purest joy that I can ever remember. There have been a few films that made me feel that summertime feeling once more, grand, glorious and glad to be alive.

Dorothy Woodend reviews films for The Tyee every Friday.