The first is “Little Trenches,” a fucked-up fable in the current issue of Ninth Letter. I’ve been trying to crack that magazine ever since I started sending out stories, and this issue was worth the wait—if you haven’t come across it before, Ninth Letter is unique in that it’s a joint project between the University of Illinois’ creative writing and art & design departments, which means that each issue looks as good as it reads. Each prose piece in this issue got a “plate” up front—a full-page teaser poster/scene interpretation/thematic riff on the story. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone adapt anything I’ve written to another medium (which is disappointing, because I think the world could use a one-man show about counting down the Best Picture nominees) and it was trippy and thrilling to see it for the first time. The issue looks phenomenal all the way around, and many thanks to the editors, readers, photographers, and designers for letting me be a part of it.

(Plus, as an excellent bonus, my story appears on the opposite page as a killer poem from my pal Anna. We made it! Top of the world!)

The other is a long time coming. The first story I ever had accepted for publication was “Plastination,” back in 2009. Because of some production delays that make the Heaven’s Gate shoot seem quaint by comparison (I kid) the story is just now hitting the stands in the pages of Artful Dodge issue 50/51. (The website hasn’t been updated in a while, but trust me, you can buy the new issue here.) The good news is that it’s a cool issue, also featuring an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner/former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and the editor there was nice enough to nominate my story for a Pushcart Prize this year. Revisiting my own story was sort of like getting a letter from my past self. I know it was only three years ago, but the world has changed since then. Back then, I couldn’t even do a pull-up. And now… alright, maybe not everything in the world has changed.

Finally, quick update on my short story contest (which a few of you, bless your hearts, have actually asked me about): My second-round story won its heat and I made the final round of 25, where we had 24 hours to write a new story. The results should be out next week, but I’ll take this opportunity to once again stress my own company line—I’m just happy I managed to finish it. I don’t always see my personal writing mandates through to the end (sort of like when I started watching Dexter; two years later and still only halfway through season one) so win or lose, this is progress.

Lo and behold, I made it through to the second round. When I got the news, I celebrated with the only song suitable for any kind of proper celebration:

Alas, my regulation window was short-lived. Now comes the second round, where the degree of difficulty increases: 72 hours to come up with a 1,500 word story using a different genre/subject/character combo. And since it’s underway as we speak, I should roll.

But before that, one quick recommendation: Do you like the news features you read to be timely, smartly observed, full of vibrant details, and written with conviction? If so, head over to The Atlantic and check out Chris Arnold’s piece about how soccer may be able to bring the fractured community of Tucson, Arizona, back together.

However, even I’m not susceptible enough to the show’s charms to claim that this is a strong year. It is not. No movie captured the public zeitgeist the way The Social Network did last year. There’s nothing as innovative as Pulp Fiction, as immersive as Fargo, as concussive as The Hurt Locker, not even a huge commercial success like Gladiator or a spirited underdog like The Full Monty to root for.

Take a look at the Best Picture nominees, or more specifically the people who made them: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Alexander Payne, Terrence Malick, Stephen Daldry, Bennett Miller. All former Best Director winners or nominees, all legitimate auteurs, yet each of them has made at least one better movie (and in some cases, several) than the one they’re currently nominated for. It seems like, even more so than usual for a show with a history of rewarding harmless, ball-less films over riskier, more visionary fare (Entertainment Weekly put together a nice list of examples) the 2012 incarnation of the Oscars is playing it safe.

So why am I still watching? Since there was no clear cut audience favorite, it’s as fun as ever to have unwinnable arguments with your friends about the movies. It’s still a cultural touchstone and the only awards show with any kind of conversational cache. Studios have been funneling unlimited money into award campaigns for years, so they make super PACs seem quaint. Someone might make a drunk speech. Sacha Baron Cohen might get Tasered. Billy Crystal as host should be… well, at least he’s not James Franco or Anne Hathaway. And, as you’ll see, there was one nominee I genuinely loved and think could contend in any year.

Still, undeniably, it’s hard to shake the feeling that these movies were culled together mechanically, as if they got on the ballot by scoring a high percentage on an Academy pop quiz. It just so happens I know what that quiz looks like, and here’s how each flick broke down. (Ranked in order of quality as I see them, not as how I think the Academy will see them.)

9) Hugo
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Post-WWI Paris)
Are there British accents? Yes—which is confusing, because everyone is supposed to be French. It’s Hollywood math: Accents from anywhere in Europe = British accents. See: Valkyrie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Yes—two of the leads, actually.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No, although Sacha Baron Cohen’s guard dog logs an appropriately menacing amount of screen time for a kids movie.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You don’t have to be born into it.
Is it a love letter to the movies? Oh, yes. It’s all, Hey golden age of cinema, do you like me? Check Yes, No, or Maybe.
Is it a talkie? Yes, though silent films get their own montage.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? No.
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

After his father dies tragically, a resilient boy with a knack for solving problems must find the key to a lock that he believes will reveal a message his father sent him from beyond the grave, all with the aid of an old man who’s lost the ability to feel. This led the pack with 11 nominations overall, and I’m still trying to figure out why. It’s the kind of movie that you see midday and have already forgotten about by dinnertime. The 3D is superfluous and distracting (like pretty much all 3D), it’s at least a half-hour fat, and some plot threads lead nowhere. It could’ve been a charming enough kids movie if it hadn’t, an hour in, veered in the direction of  languishing sloppy kisses on the silent film era and redeeming a brilliant but forgotten film director played by a pointy beard with Ben Kingsley attached to it. In a year, again, of so-so nominees, this is the one I’d be the least excited about watching a second time. Cool automaton, though.

8) The Tree of Life
Is it a period piece? Yes—everything from the dawn of time to the afterlife, with a heavy dose of 1950s America (Texas?).
Are there British accents? No. There’s barely dialogue.
Is it based on a book? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? There aren’t any “leads,” per se, but the character who comes closest is a boy who looks nothing like Sean Penn but grows up to be Sean Penn.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No, but the dinosaurs do steal their scene.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Nature is your family.
Is it a love letter to the movies? More like a ransom note.
Is it a talkie? Ostensibly, though you could watch it on mute and not miss much.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Chastain and Pitt)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

This should rightfully win for cinematography—between the magnificent visual non sequiturs of the universe and the lovely, luminous vignettes of Pitt and his family (shot entirely in natural light, without so much as a desk lamp for ambiance) the movie demands to be watched on a big screen or in HD. So why so low on the list? Because it’s not a movie, it’s the year’s best screensaver. Nothing connects the scene you’re watching to anything else in the movie, outside of the idea that everything is already connected and you’re just not seeing it. But if you buy that argument, then you probably bought it before you saw the movie, so why do you need to reinforce that idea by seeing it? I do think there’s a great movie buried deep in all the visual noise—apparently in its earlier incarnations, there was a narrative pushing the whole thing forward. But that was dropped in post-production, much to the chagrin of star Sean Penn, who told reporters after he saw the finished product that he had no idea what the movie was about or why he was in it. Hear that, ladies? Sean Penn and I are exactly alike.

7) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Is it a period piece? Yes, if we consider 10-12 years ago to be a period (and we do).
Are there British accents? No.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Shit, yeah. The precociousest.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No. Pity, too. The kid could’ve had a hamster sidekick that climbed around in a vast network of little plastic tubes piped all around the apartment and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Seems like that kind of kid.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You miss it when it's gone.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Yes, though Best Supporting Actor nominee Max von Sydow’s character is mute and sports the most effective hand tattoos this side of Cape Fear.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Davis and Goodman)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

After his father dies tragically, a resilient boy with a knack for solving problems must find the lock to a key that he believes will reveal a message his father sent him from beyond the grave, all with the aid of an old man who’s lost the ability to speak. Thomas Horn, as Oskar, is phenomenal in his first acting role—his only other media credit is winning an episode of Jeopardy! during Kids Week, which makes sense, considering the detail-oriented mind of his character. And the movie does pull a couple of interesting moments from its deep supporting cast, particularly von Sydow and Jeffrey Wright. Yet it’s easily the most polarizing movie on the list, with audience opinion ranging from powerful and cathartic to opportunistic and cruel. I’d say both ends of that spectrum are too generous—the movie is neither believable enough to move you nor shrewd enough to do harm. It’s kind of clumsy, in fact, too cluttered with literary idiosyncrasies (constantly calling 9/11 “that day, the worst day,” Oskar wearing a gas mask on the NYC subway without raising alarm) that probably made the novel a good read (I haven’t read it) but don’t translate well to film. The revelation at the end is ridiculous, but the fatal flaw is that the story is in no way specific to the very specific moment it’s trying to evoke. A son could cope with his father’s unexpected death without a national tragedy as the backdrop and you’d get the same effect. In short, it doesn’t earn the tears it wants to jerk from you. And while it’s not as manipulative or cynical about its audience as something like Remember Me, it’s still a 9/11 movie that doesn’t justify being a 9/11 movie, and that’s a burden too heavy for one great child actor to overcome.

6) The Help
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Mississippi in the 1960s)
Are there British accents? Nope. In fact, I think the only non-Southern accent is Mary Steenburgen’s, and she’s barely masking her real-life Arkansas twang.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Kathryn Stockett’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No, though not for lack of effort. One toddler is given way too many lines in the final scene.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: It can look different from you.
Is it a love letter to the movies? Maybe a Facebook poke to Steel Magnolias.
Is it a talkie? Yes. This movie loves a monologue.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Chastain and Davis)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

The Help promises to delve further than skin deep (see what I did there?) into the Jackson, Mississippi, of half a century ago and tell you what it’s like to keep a community running while being denied access to that very community. It’s a fruitful premise and a tall order that the movie doesn’t seem interested in exploring in an honest way. We get very little substantive insight into anyone’s character outside of Davis’s Aibileen—which is almost enough, quite frankly, because she’s so wonderfully in control of every moment. The Help suffers from Crash syndrome, where characters are either monsters or saints with almost no middle ground; the bad guy with the comically oversized head in Green Lantern is more subtle than the villains here. Only Davis and my favorite undercover jackal Allison Janney get to show any sort of nuance or confliction. At times, the dialogue is cringe inducing (Aibileen’s repeated affirmation to the child in her care, “You is kind, you is smart, you is important”) and at others, it’s outright insulting—I audibly groaned when Minny (Octavia Spencer) proclaims, “I love me some fried chicken.” I know the movie’s set in the 60s, but it’s still 2012, right? Then why does this movie feel like a big step backwards in our understanding of race on film? Do we really still need to be making movies whose ultimate point is that black people are people, too? And where the only way to prove that point is to have an idealistic young white girl show them the light? This movie is actually kind of dangerous in a way, because instead of showing us the way we live now, it allows us to settle for being content that we’re not as bad as we used to be. And this needs to be said even though I suppose it’s a SPOILER ALERT, but if any movie wants to be taken seriously, there’s no way the lynchpin of the entire story can be someone eating a shit pie. They kept going back to it, over and over again… it was basically their Rosebud. Not even American Pie leaned that heavily on a befouled pastry. END SPOILER ALERT. Even with all these fundamental problems, I’ve got this at #6 because, and I might’ve mentioned this already, this is a weak year. And also because the actresses are terrific. From Davis and Spencer to Chastain and Janney, they do sensational work with iffy material.

5) War Horse
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Europe during WWI, with a heavy emphasis on Ireland)
Are there British accents? Tons.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Michael Morpurgo’s novel and the subsequent stage play)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? The lead grows from childhood to adulthood over the course of the movie, and we meet some other prominent kids and young adults along the way.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Holy fuck! You’d better believe it. Besides Joey, the title equine, there’s also a surly goose filling the comic relief role.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Sometimes it has more than two legs. And possibly a giant horse dick.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No, but more than any of the other nominees, it’s perhaps the most consciously a capital-M Movie, if that makes sense.
Is it a talkie? Yes. Sadly, none of it comes from peanut buttering-up the horse’s teeth a la Mr. Ed.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Hiddleston)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

War Horse is one I had to drag myself to, mostly because I thought I knew everything that was going to happen from the trailer (and I basically did) but also because there’s the thoughtful, gritty Spielberg of Jaws, Saving Private Ryan, and Munich, and then there’s the schmaltzy, feel-good Spielberg of Always, Hook, and The Terminal, and I was afraid this would be too much of the latter. It definitely had those moments (everyone loves that fucking horse) but I was also pleasantly surprised at the darker textures in the mix. There are two scenes in particular—the two runaway German brothers outside the windmill in France and the two opposing soldiers cutting Joey loose from barbed wire while having a neighborly conversation—that transcended, that have stuck with me weeks after seeing the movie. If you can get past the handful of insane coincidences and the too-long running time, there are some things to enjoy, particularly structure-wise, where the narrative moves like a collection of linked short stories rather than a novel. It’s a move that allows Spielberg to keep the many intersecting characters at their sharpest and most effective, and to let his star run loose across his bonnie Irish canvas.

4) Midnight in Paris
Is it a period piece? About half the time, yes.
Are there British accents? Surprisingly, no. Lots of Americans, lots of Frenchmen, a few Spaniards, but no Brits. Even the English actor in the cast does his best pedantic prep school American accent.
Is it based on a book? Not unless you count the Woody Allen playbook.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Are we counting Hemingway? No? No, then.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Your wife and in-laws hate you.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Quite so.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Hiddleston)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

Possibly the year’s biggest surprise at the box office (and Allen’s most financially successful film ever), this was touted as a return to form for the director. And while it’s not Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors, it is a minor miracle at this point in his career. Owen Wilson is Woody Allen’s surrogate for life if he wants the job—there hasn’t been an actor since the man himself to make obsessive self-doubt seem so authentic, appealing, and compelling. The action slips seamlessly from 2010 Paris back to the 1920s and beyond, and it’s fun to listen to Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein rattle off Allen’s dialogue amidst lavish set designs and bottomless bottles of wine. Perfect it ain’t—the Rachel McAdams character is an utter shrew, and Wilson’s Gil doesn’t seem to be looking to replace her with much more than something beautiful, whether a girl at a flea market or a city. Yet all the actors bring their A-game, as they tend to do when they’re working with Woody Allen (he’s like the LeBron of chatty cinema that way, getting everyone involved) and I love the message about how easy, tempting, and treacherous it is to succumb to the allure of nostalgia—because doesn’t someone else’s life, or someone else’s job, or someone else’s era always seem preferable to yours? Yes, the movie is ultimately lightweight—at no point watching this did I think, This is the best movie I’ll see this year—but it was charming as hell, and this year especially, that counts for something.

3) Moneyball
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Back to the early 2000s)
Are there British accents? No. Not big into baseball over there. They probably run on the wrong side of the base paths.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Michael Lewis’s seminal profile of Oakland A’s owner Billy Beane)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? It’s more fun to watch if you think of Jonah Hill as a Doogie Howser-esque 13 year-old with a glandular disorder, but no.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No. Couldn't even throw us a token furry mascot.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You’re better off with a cheaper version of the one you already have.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Yes, to great effect. That’ll happen when Aaron Sorkin does a draft of your screenplay.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Pitt)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

You know it’s a strange award season when the repeated praise for one of the best received movies of the year is, “It actually wasn’t boring at all.” But that was the refrain I kept hearing before I saw Moneyball, as if baseball, math, and human drama were three aloof professors holding a joint lecture that people dreaded attending but were entertained by in spite of themselves. That juxtaposition is what makes it a great watch. It’s heavy on baseball jargon, but the movie has more in common with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers than Rocky, is more about challenging groupthink than splicing together inspirational training montages. As Beane, Brad Pitt is so effortlessly Zen that it probably sinks his chances of winning Best Actor, which rarely goes to such a quiet performance—he underplays Beane’s iconoclasm, the riskiness of legging out singles in a world obsessed with hitting home runs. As Peter Brand, the stat geek who sets the whole plan in motion, Jonah Hill is more sedated than subtle and maybe a little overvalued (oh yes, I get stats), but that might just be my own sour grapes for his getting a Supporting Actor nod over Patton Oswalt and Albert Brooks. It also delivers that most necessary of Oscar qualifiers, a scene that could be transcribed and acted out in high school forensics monologues across the country. In this case, it’s the whirling dervish of Beane and Brand working the phones to try and make a trade happen, swapping big-name notoriety for value, being the smartest guys in the room and willfully ignoring the fact that they’re the only guys in the room. In that scene and throughout the movie, the dialogue is crisp, the stakes are clear, and each scene efficiently builds on the one before it in a way that would probably make the real-life characters proud.

2) The Artist
Is it a period piece? Yes. (1920s Hollywood)
Are there British accents? Not unless you read the title cards that way, which is your right.
Is it based on a book? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No, for the best. No kid could convincingly pull off that mustache.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Yes—Uggie the Jack Russell terrier. Do SAG dues cover flea and tick baths? I’m not just asking for Uggie. Nick Nolte wants to know, too.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Not really. Bonus points!
Is it a love letter to the movies? Boy, howdy! It’s a good thing, too. I was starting to forget why I loved the movies.
Is it a talkie? No, unless there was a problem with the theater where I saw it.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Goodman)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.

Make no mistake: This movie will win Best Picture. And Best Director. And a host of technical awards. It’s a lock, it makes sense, and I suppose I can’t argue. I hate to sound like a broken record that you couldn’t hear if it was playing in this movie, but in a year where the status quo reigns, maybe it’s the right decision to reward a movie so fundamentally different from the others. This is the age of sensory overload, so it was refreshing to go without a familiar crutch like sound for a few hours. It makes you flex different muscles as a viewer. Watching it was even laced with the thrill of discovery: The number of actors who can ably carry every scene of a film is small enough as it is, but with so much extra emphasis on what goes unspoken, Jean Dujardin excels in the most demanding role of the year. (I look forward to his eventual turn as a Bond villain.) The Artist is not the once-in-a-generation game changer it was advertised to be—it’s a very good movie and it made for a fun night out with friends, but it falls into the same dreaded hole for me that The King’s Speech did last year: I fully admire the craft behind it, the attention to detail, the technical skill it took to pull off. That’s why it’s #2 on the list. I just didn’t care about it. It was pleasant, but so is staring at clouds, and at least that didn’t have a half-hour dead spot in the middle. Not to mention the fact that it revels in the kind of wistful nostalgia that Midnight in Paris so aptly criticizes. Let me put it to you this way: In three years, when this comes on Bravo at 10:00 on a Tuesday night, how much of it will you be compelled to sit and watch? Five minutes? Ten? Two? It’s a movie built for Oscar night but with a short half-life after that. Fair enough. It’d just be nice to see something with staying power take home the big prize. Something like…

1) The Descendants
Is it a period piece? No. Which is refreshing, isn’t it? Seriously, look back over the list.
Are there British accents? No.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Kaui Hart Hemmings’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Three of them, actually, and they’re all disarmingly great.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Just Clooney.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Oh, yes: It’s an equal source of love, friendship, pain, and joy. And occasionally, it’s wealthy and Hawaiian.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No. And I mean, I’m already forgetting why I love the movies over here.
Is it a talkie? Yes.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? No.
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Yes, in his most layered and affecting performance since Leaving Las Vegas! Just kidding. Of course not.

Alexander Payne’s Sideways is one of my all-time favorite movies, and Up in the Air is my favorite of the last three years, so yes, I was predisposed to liking this movie sight unseen. Then again, the same could be said for the Transformers movies, and I’d rather staple my scrotum to the roof of a bear’s mouth than watch one of those. The most common knock against The Descendants is that it’s depressing, and it is at times, but it’s also deeply funny, frank, surprising, and empowering. I like a movie that doesn’t treat me like a child. That trusts me to understand how George Clooney’s Matt King, in a hospital room with his unfaithful, comatose wife, could beg her forgiveness one moment and berate her the next. There aren’t good guys and bad guys here, and Payne takes great… um… care not to manipulate your emotions for sport. (Hear that, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close?) The wide scope of the B-plot, about the catch-22 of inheritance, nicely props up the characters’ conflict without getting preachy or obtrusive, and it even adds a little bit of timeliness to the story for a country that’s starting to make the distinction between being given something and earning it. Shailene Woodley wasn’t even fucking nominated for practically stealing the movie as King's oldest daughter. I’d call it a travesty, if it were possible for an Oscar snub to be a travesty. (Luckily for all of us and the state of the world, it isn’t.) This is, I think, the one movie on the list that won’t date itself by way of a gimmick, an attitude, an era, or making 3D the center of its marketing pitch. It’s about the awful ways we lose people and the inevitable ways we endure. Also, it’s set in Hawaii and it’s, like, really pretty there.

It’s a largely predictable race for the other major awards, too. Count on Davis and Spencer winning for Actress and Supporting Actress. Christopher Plummer should win his first (!), a Supporting Actor trophy for Beginners. Let's say Clooney edges out Dujardin for Best Actor, and though I’m notoriously bad at picking the writing categories, I’ll go with The Descendants for Adapted Screenplay and Midnight in Paris for Original. And for the first time in five years, Pixar won’t win Best Animated Feature. That year, Happy Feet beat out Cars. This year, Cars 2 was the studio’s first film to not even grab a nomination. Consider it Owen Wilson’s yang to the yin of Midnight in Paris.

Let’s end this on a positive note, shall we? I feel like I’ve been a Negative Nelly about the year in movies. A Doubting Debbie. A bit of a cunt. I hate to be the guy who tells you I hate your idea but then doesn’t suggest his own alternative. (I’m not a Republican, for fuck’s sake.) So, sticking with The Descendants at the top of the list, here are eight other movies from 2011 you should feel free to swap out with the actual nominees in the Oscars of your mind.

Beginners – Witness Christopher Plummer’s brilliance. Witness it!
Bridesmaids – As good, if not better, for the spot-on character moments than the big laughs.
Drive – Love it or hate it, it should’ve been on the list strictly to get people talking.
50/50 – Affecting, honest, funny, not actually filmed in Seattle.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – There’s something to be said for having unreasonable expectations thrust upon you and actually delivering.
X-Men: First Class – I realize no X-Men movie will ever have a shot at an Oscar outside the special effects realm, but I could watch young Magneto hunt Nazis on the lam for days.
Win Win – Paul Giamatti fully infusing a character with his Paul Giamattiness. Not as dirty as it sounds.
Like Crazy – The movie that hit me the hardest and stuck with me the longest. My favorite of 2011.

Unless you’ll be watching the NBA All-Star game, The Walking Dead, or a Mudcats rerun instead (and who could blame you?), enjoy the show!

Browsing around some writing links the other night, I came across the page for NYC Midnight’s 6th Annual Short Story Challenge. Here’s the gist from their official page:

• Anyone may compete from anywhere in the world.
• There are 3 rounds of competition.
• 1st Round (January 20-28): Writers are placed randomly in heats. Each heat receives a genre, subject, and character assignment. For example; Comedy (genre), a family reunion (subject), and a pathological liar (character).
• Writers then have 8 days to write an original short story (2,500 words maximum).
• The judges choose 125 writers from the 1st Round to advance to the 2nd Round.
• 2nd Round (March 8-11): Writers are again randomly placed in heats and assigned a new genre, subject, and character, only this time they have 3 days to write a 1,500 word (maximum) short story.
• The judges choose 25 writers to advance to the 3rd and Final Round.
• 3rd Round (April 13-14): The remaining writers receive a new genre, subject, and character assignment and have just 24 hours to write a 1,000 word (maximum) story.
• A panel of judges reviews the final round stories and overall winners are selected.

So I signed up. For a $49 entry fee, I have a shot at a cash prize of anywhere from $100 to $1,500 (or, most realistically, $0). But for me, the impetus to try it out was the automandate that I need to be less precious with my writing. To not stress so much about where I do it, or when, or under what conditions. I like having the time to carefully consider what I’m doing; right now, I’m trying to finish a story I’ve been revising, off and on, for four years. Sometimes, though, you just need to produce. You need to kick yourself in the ass--or in this case, be okay with someone else doing it. I’m not just talking about having a deadline, though that’s certainly part of it. It's good to stretch. It's good to force things a little, and be accountable to someone. It's good to set boundaries and play against them. And it ain't bad to have a starting point--a who, a what, a where.

In short, I'm in over my head. It's about time.

A few developments since last we talked:

• The Missouri Review has created a free online resource for creative writing teachers, featuring the best poems, stories, and essays from its considerable archive. One of the featured stories is Aimee Bender’s “The Rememberer,” and as a supplement, TMR has also posted my interview with her from last summer. I’m still in awe of just how relentlessly pleasant she was to talk to. Keep an eye on her. She’s got a future.
• I recently had a story accepted in Ninth Letter. It’ll be out in the spring/summer 2012 issue. More on this as the issue gets closer.
• Over the summer I got a dog, an Australian cattle dog/boxer mix. His name is The Bunk. And The Bunk can’t swim, but he can jump, so if anyone has any stellar tips on how to keep pups from jumping up on strangers, please send them my way.
• If you’ve never been to the Great American Beer Festival, you owe it to yourself to go. Or, to buy me the ticket you’re not going to use anyway, since I will be going every year for life from here on in.
• The best book I’ve read this year wasn’t released this year: Gentlemen’s Blood, a nonfiction history of dueling, by Barbara Holland. It’s full of stories like two dudes having a shootout in hot air balloons and Danish land disputes being settled by pitting a young man against an old woman, with the caveat that the young man was submerged to his waist in a pit and the old woman got to shoot at him with a slingshot. And you think America is overly litigious?

I’m going to make a concentrated effort to update this blog regularly over the next few months, bringing you the publication news, interviews, recommendations, and tangential jags you didn’t even know you wanted.

Onward.

In grad school, there is a real sense of a writing community, and I think that’s what I’m trying to get back with this blog.  This blog is for posting work.  It’s for giving and receiving feedback.  It’s for talking about writing, and writing about reading.  It’s for posting rejections and acceptances, and who knows what else.

It's a great idea, and there have already been some terrific posts and comments: meditations on creativity, the ultimate aims of submitting to journals, and a Skunk-Off.  You heard me.

I'll be contributing to the blog soon, and if you're at all interested in trying to write--regardless of whether you have or are planning to get an MFA--you'll be able to find something useful here.

I was at a conference at the beginning of February, and I didn’t realize until shortly before it started that I would be flying back Super Bowl Sunday. My flight landed about 15 minutes before kickoff—I was initially confused about how I got such a cheap fare on a Sunday afternoon—and considering the 90-minute trip from the airport back home, I knew I’d have to settle for only catching the second half, at best. I was a little bummed until I started thinking that it could be worse: I could be heading back from the airport while the Oscars were on. Then I blacked out from rage. When I woke up, I was wearing only a pair of tattered purple pants and I was struck with the urge to hitchhike to a soft piano soundtrack.

Yes, the Academy Awards are a three-hour-plus showcase for celebrities to pat each other on the back. Yes, the best movies and performances don’t always win, and often, they’re not even nominated. Yes, the presenter intros are cheesy, and yes, studio politicking and ad campaigns carry way too much sway in the voting.

But none of that matters. The Oscars are a grand celebration of the movies, one of the last true cultural touchstones in an evermore fractured and insulated society. It’s fun to debate the winners and losers. It’s healthy to exercise your critical eye. And in a time where any subject that can’t be measured by a standardized test score is being slashed from schools across the country, it’s necessary to be reminded that art and entertainment are not superfluous—that in fact, they’re probably the most powerful unifying agents we have.

Most importantly, there’s zero chance of Justin Bieber robbing someone more deserving of his award.

If you’re not sure what this countdown is all about, check the beginning of last year’s post. And remember, these are the 10 Best Picture nominees ranked as I see them, not how I think Academy voters will see them.

Now on with the show!

10) Winter’s Bone – The movie’s richest asset is its atmosphere: a stark, blue, wood-splitting, tater-slicing, squirrel-skinning terror that buzzes closer to your ear as the movie progresses. It’s Appalachian noir; if you told me the working title was Clarice Starling Begins, I’d believe you. Jennifer Lawrence conjures up a genuine star turn (and a Best Actress nod) while Best Supporting Actor nominee John Hawkes swings his reluctant surrogate father figure believably from detestable meth-head to virtuous, banjo-plucking meth-head. 

Still, this is the one nominee that fell flat for me. Despite its stellar production value, I simply didn’t care about what was happening. Maybe the matter-of-fact approach that the characters have to the awful circumstances of the plot, so integral in making you buy into their authenticity, also works against the movie. These people close themselves off to outsiders, including the audience, which makes it hard to get to know or empathize with them. Or hell, maybe I was just a touch slow and wanted this place’s mythology unpacked a little more explicitly. All I know is that this is the only movie on the list during which I repeatedly checked how much time was left while watching.

9) The Kids Are All Right – This slice of life-as-some-of-us-know-it is buoyed by what could be the best pound-for-pound cast of the year—which is saying something, if you look at the other ensembles on this list. Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo are the Oscar nominees, and deservedly so. (Though there was a bit of a kerfuffle that Julianne Moore, who carried as much of the load as Bening, was snubbed. I’m sure she shed a few tears about it.) Ruffalo brings equal parts pathos, affability, and prickish naivety to his organic restauranteur, a character that could have ambled unremarkably through the film on a slacker-doofus crutch. And Bening is so convincing as the blisteringly rational, kinda boozy anchor of her family that you barely notice how firmly anchored they all are.

While it’s tough to stick a movie this solid so far down the list, just know that it’s not you, The Kids Are All Right... well, actually, it is you. See, you’re like Fat Tire: So utterly well done that you seem effortless to produce—and are therefore a little too easy to disregard in favor of other options. But I mean, the authenticity of the lives you lay bare, your finish, your crisp, refreshing hops, your rich, malty undertones... wait, what was I saying? I’m thirsty.

8) True Grit – I love the Coen brothers. As I said when A Serious Man was nominated last year, no one makes more consistently must-see movies, and very few approach their stylistic range. What makes them truly fascinating is that, despite the wild differences from movie to movie, a Coen flick is instantly recognizable for its aloofness, its strangeness, its willingness to separate the viewer from the trappings of narrative that are so familiar, we forget they don’t exist freely in nature.

The thing is, I didn’t love this movie. It had several standout moments: the Indian’s interrupted last words at the hanging, the midnight ride of Rooster Cogburn, every single second Matt Damon’s LeBoeuf is onscreen, Barry Pepper trying to break his own Battlefield Earth record for Most Unbathed Character Played by Barry Pepper. But strung together, those moments felt surprisingly light. I’m not 100% sure why this movie was made—which isn’t meant to be snarky or flippant. I’m genuinely not sure what the point was, what it was addressing in the grand scheme, or why it attracted the attention of auteurs like the Coens. Which, in a way, is a testament to the way they make movies. Since I didn’t come away from True Grit with a deepened understanding of the universe, I felt cheated. Call it the tyranny of high expectations.

(Of course, they might’ve shot this movie just to prove they could. I like to imagine them sitting around their office, tossing a Nerf ball around and chatting:

Joel: “Hey bro, what’s a movie that no one thinks needs to be remade? Something iconic that people would actually get pissed about having reshot, but then when they saw it they’d have to admit it kind of rules because we’re the goddamn Coen brothers?”

Ethan: “Um... Land of the Lost?”

And since someone beat them to it, they settled on True Grit.)

7) The Fighter – Front to back, The Fighter isn’t quite good enough to be great, but riding the wave of its pitch-perfect direction and a freakishly gifted cast, it overachieves to the point where you can’t really tell it apart from true greatness. It is a boxing movie, so we all know how the story plays out before we go into the theater. (Although it certainly wasn’t helped in this regard by the year’s most unnecessarily revealing trailer. I feel like it needed its own spoiler alert.) Still, like The Blind Side last year—only much more so—the actors effectively raise the stakes of a tried-and-true story. Mark Wahlberg is stoically charming, and Melissa Leo never lets her Aquanetted matriarch sink into parody; she stays vulnerable even when she’s manipulating. I could write paragraphs, pages, about the exquisiteness of Amy Adams—and if I’m being honest with myself, that’s exactly the reason why I write anything, ever.

But the star is, of course, Christian Bale, who is the acting equivalent of the Men In Black neuralizer: With every role, he makes you forget everything you’ve seen him in before. (Which is why he was probably rushing to do a movie right after Terminator: Salvation.) Before production delays forced them out, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon were each attached to play Dicky Eklund before the movie got on track and Bale landed the part. No disrespect to Tyler Durden or Jason Bourne, fine actors both, but can you imagine either of them firing on as many pistons as Bale does? He’s a hypnotically junked-out egomaniac, but every bit as compelling for the fierceness with which he loves his brother as for his nasty habit.

6) Inception – It’s never a bad thing when the most talked-about movie of the year is a Best Picture nominee. (Well, almost never.) But lost in all the Was Leo dreaming the whole time?!? chatter was the fact that this movie had a remarkably high degree of difficulty, and it succeeded on more fronts than not. Director/Writer/Product/Sweater Vest Enthusiast Christopher Nolan infuses his love of heist movies and heartsick dudes seeking redemption with his love of high-concept sci-fi mindbenders (as the story goes, he based the look of Gotham City in Batman Begins off of Blade Runner’s LA post-AI cyberhell). The result is a metatext that’s equally concerned with questioning our own reality and exploding conventional action movie formulas—a shoot ‘em up for people who think shoot ‘em ups don’t need to be ass-dumb to entertain. The irony, of course, is that it has to use the conventions of James Bond-style popcorn flicks—secret mountain lairs, bottomless machine gun clips, villains with foreign accents—in order to break them down. This may have caused some logic issues for some, but I think those people can’t see the dream city for the crumbling buildings.

I once asked my dad, a man who has probably farted away in his sleep more sports trivia than most people ever acquire, why he was so drawn to watching them. He said, “With every game, there’s a chance of seeing something you’ve never seen before.” Well, that’s also why people go see big-budget studio blockbusters every summer. Only most of the time, we all leave disappointed. That’s why Inception, despite the hype, actually is a game-changer. It’s not perfect, it has holes, but it also has ambition. It’s not a sequel or a remake or a repackaging of something nobody wanted the first time around. It’s an indie crime story made with studio money, an old school/new school hybrid that wants to kick you into post-modern pop consciousness.

I’m pretty sure it was all a dream, though.

(Oh, and if on Sunday night you’re listening to the Best Director nominees and get worried that whoever’s reading from the prompter might have accidentally skipped Nolan’s name, take comfort: Nothing’s wrong. He wasn’t nominated. Inception is up for prizes in the Best Picture, Screenplay, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Original Score, Art Direction, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing categories, but apparently it directed itself.)

5) The King’s Speech – No list of nominees for the big prize would be complete without a prestige period piece, a character study about a powerful political figure, or a feel-good yarn about someone overcoming a disability. The King’s Speech is all three in one. Throw in the British accents, and Oscar probably messtified the inside of his shiny gold pants.

At times, this movie is wildly funny, and it boasts the year’s best montage (mon-tage!) and some tremendous production design. Colin Firth so perfectly captures the sonic rhythms of his character that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Kanye West produced his dialogue. Geoffery Rush gets the funniest lines and deadpans them in beautiful contrast to the hammy failed stage actor/speech therapist he plays. But really, the highest compliment I can pay it is that, having only seen the trailer, I was convinced it wouldn’t be able to make me care about the would-be king’s speech impediment. It seemed to have too many of the easy trappings I mentioned above, and after all, in a time of severe economic downturn, a king’s PR problems seem like nice problems to have.

But they got me (mostly) by establishing the context. There was an enormous amount of pressure—especially in that country at that time, with an enemy like Hitler stirring his own countrymen not far away—to appear strong, capable, unflappable. So if you couldn’t even say “unflappable,” it was a big deal. I’ve got it this far back, though, because while it struck me deadly in the mind and the heart, it never quite sunk into my gut. I understood the movie’s point of view, I admired its craft, but I wasn’t necessarily moved by it.

(Along those lines, am I alone in thinking that this movie told the wrong story? I was much more fascinated with a king abdicating his throne in a time of impending war so he could run away to Baltimore with an American divorcee than I was with that guy’s brother’s public speaking issues. Someone has to have made a movie about King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, right? I’d watch 90 minutes of them househunting or going through customs at the airport.)

4) Black Swan – A delightfully fucked-up mainstream hit, no movie delivered more for its $10 this year than Black Swan. Yet for all the thriller/chiller shocks, eerie masturbation fakeouts, and Winona Ryder face stabbings, the tension here comes from within the characters, much as the Black Swan lurks within the White—or, if you prefer, as Stefan Urquelle lurks within Steve Urkel. In a physically unforgiving role, Natalie Portman channels through her ingénue’s body the desperation of someone holding onto her sanity by the fingernails her mother creepily trims. It’s a flawless performance, a thing of painful beauty to watch.

Darren Aronofsky is moving steadily toward Coen Bros territory—except that where they use black humor to burrow into issues of faith and fidelity and philosophy, Aronofsky bludgeons his subject matter and lets us see what we want in the blood trail. Black Swan is his most visually striking movie yet—The Fountain included—because even the heady effects shots seem organic to the story. And when was the last time a movie made you say “What the fuck?” to yourself so many times? (In a good way, I mean. Not in a Nicolas Cage way.) From mysterious scratches on a dancer’s back to a night of Portman and Mila Kunis out drinking and flirting to opening night at the ballet (a high-art take on the junkyard scene in Superman III), you never truly know where you’re going next—a rare gift in the age of internet spoilers and DOA plot twists.

(Between Portman here, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and the entire cast of Requiem for a Dream, it seems like Aronofsky has an innate need to physically torture his stars. Is he on a human rights watchlist somewhere? Should we be concerned for Hugh Jackman on the set of the next Wolverine movie?)

3) 127 Hours – Making a movie is hard enough in the first place. But it gets harder when 1) Everybody going to see your movie not only knows the ending, but knows how we’ll get there; 2) You restrict yourself to shooting the majority of the action in a space roughly the size of an outhouse; and 3) You cast a heretofore shaky leading man whose most memorable onscreen moments are a guest stint on General Hospital and this bullshit. Yet Danny Boyle did all that and came out with a stirring, stunning redefinition of what we think are our physical and spiritual limits.

While James Franco seems to harness a lot of his James Francosity in the adventurous and charismatic Aron Ralston, he also taps into primal wells of regret and despair and courage—the type of things you think may be buried within you but hope you’ll never have the opportunity to dig up. Honestly, I didn’t know he had this kind of performance in him. (All we had to do was pin him under a boulder.) Lost in all the (much-deserved) talk of the Oscar host and fellow MFA’s performance—and the visceral shock of the arm-snapping scene—is the fact that this is one seriously gorgeous looking movie. Boyle virtually reinvents the way people will film stream-of-consciousness thought from now on, jumping from synapse to synapse, dense crowd to abandoned mountain, with a documentarian’s knack for making us look beyond what he’s showing. I’ve read about Hollywood going into preproduction on films based on Chutes and Ladders, Battleship, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, and The Wonder Twins. Ridiculous as all of these seem, I never completely dismiss any idea because I tell myself there’s always a chance Danny Boyle might make it. In which case, I’d be compelled to watch.

2) Toy Story 3 – I wasn’t the biggest fan of Up, Pixar’s Best Picture nominee from last year. (Though it’s the movie I most lie about liking in casual conversation, because when you tell someone you didn’t like Up, they look at you like Chris Hansen should be waiting for you in a kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade and a chat transcript.) Toy Story 3, on the other hand, moved fluidly from wordplay to sight gag, heartache to action, tension to torment to redemption. Conceptually and in the execution, there wasn’t a single misstep. And if that sounds overblown for a cartoon, well... SPOILER ALERT When the toys decide there’s no way out of the incinerator and silently join hands, I didn’t cry—I got chills. Was I really watching personified toys in a kids movie accept the reality that they were about to die? This blew my mind. Let me put it simply: If you weren’t moved by the incinerator scene, please throw yourself into one. END SPOILER ALERT

Aside from the visual quality of the animation, which seems to get better with every Pixar release, I loved the attention to detail—which probably has something to do with the fact that these guys only put out one movie a year. (It’s a release schedule Michael Bay should adopt, only instead of once a year, he should release a movie once every never again.) The way Woody runs, all felt and panic; the pancake; Sid from the first movie returning as a garbage man; the opening scene, possibly the best representation of how a kid’s mind works when he’s playing with toys that’s ever been put to film (or a hard drive, or whatever). While watching it I caught myself, multiple times, with a huge damn smile on my face. I haven’t flat-out enjoyed a movie this much in a long time—and I was this close to ranking it number one for the year. I’ve been going back and forth in my head for weeks. While it was in fact my favorite movie of the year, it just barely loses out on being called the best because of...

1) The Social Network – This is probably the movie that converted the most devotees between the time it was announced and the time it was up for award consideration. How many people did you talk to who said they had no interest in seeing a Facebook movie? (And how many people posted something to that effect on Facebook?) Yet here it is, an ironclad masterwork and a commercial hit, a seamless blend of exceptional writing, directing, and acting delivered at the ideal cultural moment.

Jesse Eisneberg, performing alongside former boy band impresarios and future superheroes, is mild-mannered enough that you don’t expect his cynicism, his emotional ruthlessness. For our collective fascination with movies like Saw or live feeds of street violence in other countries, nothing wigs us out more than detachment. Mark Zuckerberg is an electrically amoral anti-villain, someone who may well have committed the crime of the century—only we’re too pleased with the aftermath to care. Beginning with an epic back-and-forth between Zuckerberg and a soon to be ex-girlfriend and building in scene after perfectly rendered scene, The Social Network makes all its players as helpless to prevent what’s happening as we who are watching it. We may love that for once, the handsome and fit and intelligent and well-bred Winklevoss twins don’t get what they want, and we may feel for Eduardo, too trusting of his backstabbing friend, and we may cringe at the disregard Sean Parker has for the bodies strewn in his wake. But in the end, we’re a generation of watchers, more likely to post our feelings online than to act on them. (Irony!)

The main draw for me wasn’t Facebook being slid under the cultural microscope, it wasn’t the phenomenal Eisenberg, and it wasn’t the Trent Reznor-scored soundtrack (though all those things delivered). I wanted to see this movie because Aaron Sorkin wrote it. I daresay there’s not a bigger West Wing fan on the planet than me; I just finished watching it through for the fourth time. Sorkin’s stuff has a rewatchable quality that other big name screenwriters seem to lack. He’s timely, sure, be it with Jed Bartlet or Mark Zuckerberg, but he’s also timeless. His stuff feels like it could’ve existed in the 80s or the 40s as easily as it does now. Not surprisingly, this movie had the year’s best exchange of dialogue:

Cameron Winklevoss: What, do you want to hire an IP lawyer and sue him?

Divya Narendra: No, I want to hire the Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer!

Tyler Winklevoss: We don't even have to do that.

Cameron Winklevoss: That's right.

Tyler Winklevoss: We can do that ourselves. I'm 6'5", 220, and there's two of me.

And for what it’s worth, the first and second runners-up probably also came from this movie.

What are we ultimately looking for from a Best Picture winner? It doesn’t have anything to do with content—plots of past winners have varied wildly from Holocaust survival tales to sword-and-sandal epics to two losers toting their dead boss around a beach for a few days. (What? Weekend at Bernie’s didn’t win Best Picture? Goddamn it. I don’t even know you anymore, America.) I think we want to be moved, and we want to be sure other people were moved the same way we were. So which movie this year better reflects the desire to feel like part of something bigger than yourself?

As far as who I think is actually going to take it... it’s close. While I think The Social Network is most deserving—and will be, win or lose, the film we remember most fondly and vividly in the years to come—I don’t think stodgy Academy voters will be able to talk themselves out of The King’s Speech. (See what I did there?) Plus, as I said about last year’s Best Picture winner, every movie is made better by the presence of Guy Pearce. He’s the nose that’ll help this movie break the tape at the finish line.

"But Brian, who’s going to win the other races?"

Glad you asked, internet.

Best Director: David Fincher. Tom Hooper is closing in fast, but Fincher’s direction is so deft that you probably didn’t notice all the action in The Social Network came from the boardroom back-and-forth of concurrent lawsuits. He makes copyright litigation enthralling.

Best Actor: Colin Firth. Like with Jeff Bridges last year or Denzel Washington in 2002, it’s just his time. If you have to be a contrarian, there’s a roughly 7% chance Jesse Eisenberg could pull off the upset. (Between the two, I’d actually like to see Eisenberg take it, if only because he found a way into a part that didn’t have such an obvious way in.) However, if it were up to me—and honestly, why isn’t it?—I’d give it to James Franco, who was riveting for 90 minutes of being stuck in a crevice.

Best Actress: I’ll say Natalie Portman even though Annette Bening may take it home as a makeup Oscar for her passed-over turns in American Beauty, The Grifters, and that other thing she did that no one saw.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale. Done and done.

Best Supporting Actress: The well-meaning but sorely misguided among us think this is already in the bag for Melissa Leo. And true enough, if Hailee Steinfeld had been nominated in the Best Actress category instead of here (which she should’ve been; she’s onscreen more than Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges), I wouldn’t argue with these people. But unfortunately for Leo, Steinfeld is the unnervingly motivated, precocious-but-not-precious center of True Grit in one of the best performances of the year, regardless of the category. (Also, have I mentioned the lovely and amazing Amy Adams already? Because she is both lovely and amazing.)

Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler, The King’s Speech.^* Typing out all that stuttering is hard work.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network.^* Lock of the night.

^*Last year, I correctly predicted every category except the two screenplay awards. For real, y’all: I don’t know shit about writing.

Enjoy the show, everyone! Here’s hoping Franco takes some time out from the monologue to recite some slam poetry or something.

But sometimes, the people you look up to actually exceed your expectations. Over the summer, I had the chance to talk with Aimee Bender, one of my all-time favorite writers who, as it turns out, is a kind and charming and gracious person and a wildly thoughtful interviewee. We talked about her new novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake--as well as the creative writing major, memorizing poems, LA, bullies, Michael Pollan, and much more.

The interview is now available in the Fall 2010 issue of The Missouri Review. You can read all about the issue and grab your copy here. Big thanks to the TMR staff for including the interview in such a great issue!

From the back cover:

Telling Stories, Talking Craft is a collection of fifteen conversations with some of the finest contemporary fiction writers. These distinguished authors discuss their lives and their craft in candid, thought-provoking interviews from the pages of Sycamore Review, Purdue University's international journal of literature, opinion and the arts.

The anthology was edited by Christopher Feliciano Arnold and Anthony Cook, who remark in their foreword that to the people who do it, writing isn't just a job, it's a lifestyle. As such, what you get here isn't a series of lectures, but engaging personal conversations about the writing life. The interviewers were, at the time, students in Purdue's English program, young writers getting the chance to talk shop with the pros. (I almost typed, "talk prose with the pros," but I thought that might irrevocably rip the fabric of spacetime.) And I'm stoked that my interview with Michael Chabon is included in the mix.

(Brief aside: Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the book that, above all others, is responsible for me pursuing a writing career. Getting to actually sit down and talk to the man about his life and work was a legitimate thrill. So the next time someone tries to tell you nothing good comes of an MFA program, think of that moment and punch them in the neck for me.)

Among the many gems to be found in this collection, you'll get:

Charles Baxter on the myth of productivity.
Kate Bernheimer on taking women seriously.
Larry Brown on happy endings.
Robert Olen Butler on war and fear.
Michael Chabon on his reputation in Finland.
Lan Samantha Chang on fiction since 9/11.
Peter Ho Davies on kitchen sink drafts.
Andre Dubus III on bartending.
Richard Ford on getting into fistfights.
Jane Hamilton on landscape and Home Depot.
Nick Hornby on The Da Vinci Code.
Ha Jin on being called a traitor.
Nami Mun on fictional gaps.
Benjamin Percy on zombies and cemeteries.
Steve Yarbrough on rejection and the South.

Plus, an introduction by the great Michael Martone.

Personally, it's been a great thing for me to revisit a lot of these interviews, which I remember either from reading in issue or from being in the live audience as they happened. But it's been equally fun to discover the ones that came before my time at Sycamore, and to glean new perspective on the craft from a familiar and trusted source.

Congrats to Chris, Tony, and the other interviewers and interviewees for shaping this collection!

Oh, and Tony, Sycamore's current Editor-in-Chief, would also want me to mention that their Summer issue is available now.  Get it here!