Well, awards season has officially begun -- while film critics nationwide have been trying to cram in screenings of movies before their respective critic's awards nominations close (BFCA members, for example, have to file their nominations before Midnight Friday), one group has already made it's choices. The National Board of Review has named Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima as the best film of the year. Other surprises can be found on the full list of winners, including Martin Scorsese winning Best Director for The Departed, and Forrest Whittaker winning Best Actor for The Last King of Scotland; at the same time, The National Board of Review is easily one of the most mysterious of all critic's groups who hand out gongs at the end of the year -- as David Poland concisely points out at his blog, The Hot Button, the New York-based NBR isn't exactly the most accurate Oscar predictor. Add in the fact that the NBR is notoriously troubled by accusations of corruption and incompetence, and Iwo Jima's win may seem more like a blessing than a curse for Warner Bros, who moved Iwo Jima up to be released and eligible for awards consideration in 2006 after the critical and box-office disappointment of Flags of Our Fathers, Eastwood's first World War II epic of the year. ...

Does hearing about this award spark your cuiosity about Letters from Iwo Jima? Or leave you wondering more about who the heck the National Board of Review actually are?

Perhaps the secret to filmmaking is simplicity. Simple notions can open an array of doors and options, whereas a complex starting point doesn't have the same easily-accessible origins. This seems to be the case with The Lives of Others, which was an incredibly simple idea that grew into a complex and compelling story. The film was born when a scene popped into Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's head of a surveillance man who expects disloyalty, but instead finds himself moved by what he hears. It's the inextricable flaw of Big Brother -- when run by human hands, there is no guarantee that someone will remain impartial.

As Martha Fischer described in her review, Stasti officer Gerd Wiesler watches Georg Dreyman evolve from a hands-off citizen to passionate rebel. Wiesler begins to spot the flaws in what he previously saw as a flawless system, and begins to act accordingly. But there is also a power behind the film that becomes clear when you step behind the scenes. When I saw the film at TIFF, the Q&A made everything a little bit clearer, and the recent interview with Donnersmarck for The Hollywood Reporter does the same.

This is a film that draws power from personal experience. While research and consultants are well and good, Others has an understanding that fuels the piece and makes it seem all the more real. Donnersmarck did conduct extensive research to get it right, but he also had his memories of travelling to East Germany, and an actor who knew the Stasi first-hand. Now, after winning a flurry of awards in Germany, it is the country's submission to the Oscars.

I may have seen the best movie of 2007 on Friday. I mean there are plenty of caveats above and beyond the "may" in that first sentence: The best movie of 2007 in my opinion, of course, and frankly I want to watch the movie again on a big screen before I decide. Of course, the fact I want to watch it again is interesting. The fact that it has me cross-referencing and re-contemplating half the rest of the year's films, from United 93 to Pan's Labyrinth is also interesting. I'm not being coy by not naming the film -- I just, again, want to be sure. I mean, I was insanely fired up over the trailer for The Good German, and that didn't exactly work out. (More details about that on Wednesday, in my The Good German review. ) But if I've seen a trend in this year's films, it's that many of them are what for a lack of a better term I'll call fables -- evocative and heartfelt dream-like tales that are long on imagination and vision but short on rigorous story. Some of the more impressive films I saw all year were fables in that way -- Brick; Pan's Labyrinth; The Lives of Others; Lights in the Dusk and, yes, the film I saw on Friday -- they may not be coherent narratives (or, rather, they may not be conventionally coherent narratives) but something in them sticks to your heart and dreams and head in a rare way. The movie I saw on Friday is ugly, harsh and wrenching; there's something mutedly hopeful in it, like slow strings coming through harsh bass notes. Yet at the same time, as the credits roll, there's no guarantee those strings will be ultimately be heard instead of the blank silence of death. And that's what makes this time of year exciting for a film critic -- although, really, it's what happens every time the lights go down and you sit hopeful in the darkness: Maybe you'll see something worth talking about and re-assessing. Maybe you'll see something worth thinking about. Worth feeling for.

What's the best movie you've seen all year? And seen any good fables lately?

J.

Remember when Mel Gibson "re-cut" The Passion of the Christ and released a "kinder, friendlier" version of the flick just over a year after the original cut hit the scene? (And how nobody really cared anymore by that point?) Have you been waiting for the "less gory" Passion to hit DVD? Well, here it comes as part of a 2-disc "definitive edition" that's scheduled to pass the collection plate on January 30.

To be fair, there's nothing even remotely new about all-new Special Editions, and it certainly looks like the impending DVD will be absolutely over-stuffed with supplemental features -- which helps to explain why the original Passion DVD was entirely bereft of extras. Fans of the film will no doubt delight in the FOUR separate audio commentaries (director, production, composer and theologian!), deleted scenes, production galleries, a pair of documentaries and some theatrical trailers. (Visit DVDActive for the cover art and full specs.)

The Passion Re-Cut will also be included on the new release, should you be among those who'd like to witness Christ's final hours without all that hardcore gore and terrible torture. I haven't done the math, but I'm guessing the violence-free version of The Passion should run about ... 49 minutes in length. (In reality the Re-Cut is only about eight minutes shorter.) And before you consider leaving me a nasty message for approaching this movie with such irreverence, have a look at my original review of the film. Yep, I liked it!

As a fan of film and of reggae music, I say goodbye to an important figure. Perry Henzell, who directed The Harder They Come, died of cancer Thursday at the age of 70. Henzell wasn't a prolific filmmaker, but his 1972 classic helped popularize reggae music throughout the world. It is one of those films where the soundtrack is just as important as the actual picture.

Henzell shot a second film thirty years ago, but it wasn't finished until just recently. No Place Like Home premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and is opening in Jamaica this weekend, screening at the Flashpoint Film Festival.

Having grown up listening to Jamaican music and performing in a ska/reggae band, I have to wonder if my life would have been different had The Harder They Come never been made. Sure, reggae would have likely been exposed to the world without the film, but that isn't important. What is important is that Henzell was able to showcase the music and its locale with such a raw, realistic portrayal. Outsiders were able to not only grab hold of the sound, but also its roots and its environment, as they were introduced to a music in its context, something rarely displayed so definitively.

We're just over six weeks away from the Sundance Film Festival, and it's shaping up to be a fun fest. I love film festivals, and thankfully, haven't yet gotten so jaded that I don't get excited when fest lineups are announced (seriously, if I ever get to the point that I'm not excited about the possibility of finding a wonderful film or two a fest, someone please just shoot me and put me out of my misery). We've already told you about the competition films and the Midnight offerings, which Scott Weinberg will be covering extensively for us at Sundance, once he recovers from his deep disappointment at the lack of horror there this year.

Now it's time to unwrap the big, shiny packages labled "Premiere", "Spectrum" and "New Frontier" and take a peek at what's inside ...

In a lovely little film called The Hanging Garden, writer/director Thom Fitzgerald gave us a character at three stages of life, growing and changing and crashing into old conceptions of himself. The three Williams, at different ages, even appeared on screen simultaneously. Fitzgerald's latest triptych is more subtle in the way it sews together its three-paneled story, but no less successful. 3 Needles is a clever anthology, spaced across three continents, in which AIDS and money are aggressively juxtaposed against each other until the point -- the new possibility of bartering with the disease -- emerges. One third of the story takes place in a French-Canadian household, where Olive, played by Stockard Channing, purposefully contracts HIV as part of a bold insurance swindle. A world away, in Southern Africa, a cynical Afrikaans plantation owner called Hallyday (Ian Roberts) invests in AZT because 70 percent of his workers are positive, and the drug will keep them alive and working longer. In rural China, a blood smuggler called Jin (Lucy Liu) sells tainted blood to start-up hospitals that are not yet sophisticated enough to reject her.

Each story has the low-energy pitch of a routine business meeting where everyone knows more or less how things will shake out. Nearly every scene is shot inside a blah-colored office or a workplace -- we even see some bored-looking porn workers greet a nurse who arrives to give them a routine HIV test. Ten years ago, a movie with AIDS as its central subject would have found it necessary to deal with the horror of lesions, hospital goodbyes and grief. This film seeks to rob AIDS of its plague-mystique and drag it into the realm of the workaday and the banal, where most other aspects of a managed life reside. It mostly succeeds, although a burdensome narration (can you name the last movie that was actually improved by a narration?) and a remarkably aimless ending hurt the project a great deal. The African story in particular seems to have been considered a weak link -- it shows many signs of editing-suite triage. Thankfully, the other two parts of the film are good enough to make up for it.

Travel advisory: if you ever find yourself walking aimlessly under the snake-dripping treetops of an uncharted Amazonian jungle with no food or water, and the only person who shows up to help you looks like the Brazilian Roy Scheider, fire your travel agent. Turistas, an expensive horror movie from the newly christened Fox Atomic logo, is notable for two things: some impressive natural scenery and for fetishizing something that is normally more of a given in the horror genre -- the white-woman-in-distress motif. The story concerns a ragtag group of 'gringos' -- the word is used about 100 times -- who stray off course during some South American holiday-making and end up in the clutches of a mad surgeon with a colonialism-chip on his shoulder. He intends to remove their vital organs and bundle them off to the black market. Once an unlucky gringo is strapped to the operating gurney, they are forced to simultaneously watch their own evisceration and listen to the doctor's quips, like: "I'd also take the skin from your lily-white ass, but it doesn't travel."

Needless to say, creepiness is the wavelength the film wants to travel on, as opposed to the usual buffet of boo-moments. Fair enough, but aside from those unfortunate transplant sessions, there are only a couple of moments that really deliver on that level. One occurs in the opening moments of the film, when the turistas, who clump together on foot after the tour bus they are all sharing crashes, encounter an unaccompanied Brazilian child in the street. A friendly attempt to snap a photo of the kid nearly sets off an international incident, with the angry parents rushing into the frame, spitting curses and threats in Portuguese. It's a good 'back away slowly' moment. A more serious culture clash comes when the group, led by an Australian beach bunny called Pru (Melissa George) and a sensitive jock called Alex (Josh Duhamel) unwittingly arrive at the jungle home of the evil surgeon. Because they don't speak the lingo, they stand idly by, checking their watches, as the doctor and his henchmen walk around them and between them like incurious sharks, all the while chatting in Portuguese about how they are going to slice and dice them.

I think we are all used to a little scandal with our celebrities; a couch jump here, a nip-slip there and even the odd racist tirade. But a trial in India surrounding Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt has them all beat.

Just days after having one his films chosen as an eligible Foreign Selection for the Oscars (Lage raho Munnabhai), Sanjay Dutt has been convicted for his role in a wave of bombings that swept the city of Mumbai, India in 1993. Over 250 people were killed during the blasts, and families have waited over 13 years to see the accused brought to trial. Dutt was a one of Bollywood's most respected stars and this story has gripped India for weeks now. Dutt was accused of criminal conspiracy under the Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, and possession of illegal arms under the Arms Act. Dutt was found guilty of the firearm possession, but acquitted of all other charges.

The bombings had been linked to Indian organized crime, which has long been rumored to be connected to the entertainment business. The Indian film industry is the biggest in the world in terms of the number of films produced and tickets sold. So if you are unfamiliar with the Bollywood phenomenon, this is the equivalent of Jack Nicholson going on a bombing rampage in downtown LA -- it's that big. It's not over yet though, as Dutt is still out on bail and is awaiting sentencing on December 19.

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam is happening this week, and in addition to showcasing a ton of old and new docs from all around the world, the event features a number of discussion panels. On Saturday, for instance, was the First Annual IDFA UnDebate, which presented representatives from China, India, Australia, the United States, Israel and Brazil talking about the state of documentary film. IndieWIRE has a full report on this talk, and from their perspective it seems that global non-fiction cinema is in a great place right now.

Aside from the overall consensus that documentary films are experiencing good times all over, there were some interesting points to be learned from the UnDebate. For example, distribution for docs in China is pretty much limited to pirated DVDs. In Brazil, docs account for one-third of the country's theatrical exhibition. Australia is experiencing a thriving doc industry via television. In numerous areas, the fashion of using talking heads is going out of style.

Not everything is rosy in the doc world, however, and the American representatives were more attuned to the problems being faced with the genre (are we just more pessimistic here in the States?). Oscar-nominated director Jonathan Stack (The Farm: Angola, USA) expressed a frustration with trying to find a balance between activism and passivity. He apparently has issues with the self-servicing model happening a lot these days, having abandoned a recent project after becoming too involved in its political subject matter. Steven Bognar warned about too many pop docs following familiar models, such as the currently in vogue "contest films." He also claimed too many docs are too long (his latest, A Lion in the House, is 230 min., by the way). His directing partner, Julia Reichert, stated that because it is presently "sexy" to be a documentary filmmaker, that more docs are being produced than can find distribution.

It can sometimes be a battle to get a book onto the big screen -- if you want to see just how ugly it can get, I highly recommend The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco. Juan Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China was published over 14 years ago, but is finally making the transition to film.

Variety announced that Portobello Pictures have purchased the film rights to Juan Chang's award winning book. Chang chronicles the political and social changes in China through the personal stories of her mother, grandmother, and herself. Portobello Pictures' Eric Abraham acquired the rights with Christopher Hampton on board to write the screenplay. In the book, Chang's family stories are part of some of the most violent moments in China before, during, and after Mao Zedong.

Abraham plans to make the film in Chinese -- which can sometimes scare off North American audiences, even though the book was written in English. Chang has a personal connection to Abraham, which might explain why after all of these years she was finally willing to sell the rights. It's a dense book full of detail and history that might be hard to fit into one film. Abraham promises that while the film might be epic in scale, he would like to have the film ready for a 2008 release. We've already waited 14 years, what's one more?

As fast as the film process travels these days, there are still films that take years to come out. Although Bubba Ho-tep evoked a melange of laughter and praise at festival screenings, we had to wait eons for the film to reach theaters as it slowly made its way from cinema to cinema. Others like Prozac Nation, which was filmed during the height of Jason Biggs and Michelle Williams' teen celebrity, could only make it to DVD four years after its TIFF premiere. And then there is Tears of the Black Tiger.

After premiering in the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2000, Wisit Sasanatieng's directorial debut was the first Thai film to be accepted at Cannes in 2001. Although it went on to tour a number of festivals, garnered praise, and opened in a number of European cities, it was bought by Miramax Films and never released. Now, six years after its premiere, indieWIRE has reported that Magnolia Pictures has acquired the rights.

Black Tiger is the classic bad guy-good girl love story. There's Rumpoey, the wealthy girl whose father wants her to marry a police officer, and Dum, a poor young man who is torn between his love for Rumpoey and his desire to avenge an attack on his father. If you're curious about the film, and the color techniques used to enhance it, check out this Preview Online article that was released in 2001. If you're anxious to see the film, an uncut version will be shown on January 12 at New York's Film Forum with national release dates to follow.

I will admit that at first, I didn't want to see The Host. As much as I love camp, I wasn't prepared to use one of my TIFF slots on it. However, after a long day of films, I was offered a ticket to the Midnight Madness showing and was very glad that I went and entered Cinematical's ring of Host appreciators. It was a puzzle of strangely-shaped pieces that fit together in the way most horror films don't. As the giant killer tadpole gets ready to attack US screens, it will do so as an award winner.

The film recently scored a bunch of awards at the 2006 Korean Film Awards. Some are more obvious -- it's no surprise that the daylight effects of the water monster scored the film accolades for Best Special Effects, which go along with some of the other technical awards like Best Sound Effects, Best Lighting and Best Cinematography. However, that's not all! The hungry tadpole also scored Best Picture and Best Director. Yes, a horror film slid into Korea's top spot.

Times like this kind of make me wish that the film industry hadn't evolved to its current system. Beyond random blips like My Cousin Vinny, the top honors are over-run with drama, history and social commentary. I can appreciate that all well and good, but it wouldn't hurt to throw some slaughtering tadpoles into the mix. If you follow the "Read" link, you can see the current trailer for the film, which plans to hit theaters on January 29 for a limited release. Keep in mind that although the movie takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, it's not half as serious as the trailer suggests.

As the year starts winding down, it's time to begin looking into what will come out in the New Year. Tartan Films, the company that brought us everything from Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs to a whole lot of Rocco Siffredi in Anatomy of Hell, is bringing some of this year's quirky and notable festival offerings to the big screen in 2007. Here are five months of funky cinema slated for 2007, some of which have great Cinematical reviews for you to peruse:

February: The Page Turner follows a girl whose botched piano examination leads her to turn away from her passion for the keys, only to be faced with it later when she comes face-to-face with the person whose rudeness shattered her resolve.

March:

Red Road

was the Cannes Jury Prize winner that showed the human weakness behind Big Brother -- a woman's dispassionate viewing of the streets of Glasgow dissolves when she spots a familiar face.

April: Triad Election is filmmaker Johnny To's answer to The Godfather, and the second part to his election epic.

May: Princess is the animated film about a orphan whose mother was a porn star, and the ex-priest uncle who comes to take care of her.

June: 12:08 East of Bucharest is the comedically melancholy story of a man in Bucharest trying to put together a live TV show on the revolution.

Honorable Mention: Taxidermia is worthy of mentioning, although a release date is yet to be determined. It's a tale about an overweight speed eater, a large cat embalmer and a man who shoots fire from his penis -- so what's not to love?

I really don't know where I stand on Brittany Murphy. I actually watched Almost Home for lack of something better to do. When she made her way to Clueless, she seemed fun, but I think my interest waned with her weight. However, I found myself seeing Love and Other Disasters at TIFF, and was actually entertained. I'm not sure if it was the movie itself, the crappy film I had seen earlier in the day, or if I was under the influence of fan girl exuberance. Regardless, I'm actually intrigued by her upcoming movie, Ramen Girl.

Earlier this year, Erik Davis shared casting news. Now, Movies Online has released part of an interview they conducted with the waif. While the short synopsis does the film no justice, it sounds like more than a bubble-gun remake of Lost in Translation. The start is typical -- girl follows boy to foreign country, he goes off and girl is left to her own devices. After a little wandering, she decides to learn the art of ramen, which is news to me, since my ramen knowledge goes no further than Montana going nuts for it on the Real World: Boston .

I'm sure this is still sounding sketchy, so let me throw in the twist: Since it takes place in Japan, half of the film will be in Japanese, and according to Murphy, she's the only one speaking English for most of it. If she can throw off the silly, romantic comedy gimmicks that seem to hover around her like Pig-Pen's dirt, she might be able to make something new of her career.