Entrevista a George Clooney (Clarín)

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The New York Times Oscars Special - Being Clooney: Not as Easy as It Looks

By TERRENCE RAFFERTY

THERE’S no mystery, none at all, about why George Clooney is a movie star. Guys who are extremely handsome, move well, can project intelligence and humor, appear to enjoy the company of women and possess soft, deep masculine voices have historically done pretty nicely for themselves on the silver screen.

Mr. Clooney, in fact, often seems like a throwback to the leading men of earlier eras: a passing resemblance to Cary Grant, especially when he deploys his wry half-smile; a hint of Paul Newman’s ’60s cool. He’s the kind of actor who could float along forever on his genial presence alone, coast on charm. But he doesn’t. (Or doesn’t always.) That’s the mystery.

His performance in Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” has put him in early contention for this year’s best actor Oscar, and a more effective showcase for his skills would be tough to imagine. Playing an Omaha business consultant named Ryan Bingham, who flies around the country firing people for a living (but with a gentle touch) and occasionally delivers motivational speeches in which he advises his listeners to shed the burdens of responsibility, Mr. Clooney appears in every scene and exudes all-American confidence. Dressed in impeccably cut suits and wheeling his carry-on bag with the deftness of a seasoned pro, he glides through airports and chain hotels as if he owned them, as in a sense he does.

Ryan is on the road, we’re told, for more than 300 days a year, and these impersonal places are — by choice — his true home. Instead of family photos, his wallet is filled with cards proclaiming his membership in the elite clubs reserved for the highest-volume business travelers, badges of identity supplied by airlines, hotels, car-rental agencies. It doesn’t seem like much of a life, but it suits him down to the ground. (So to speak.) The big nowhere is his comfort zone.

What makes “Up in the Air” an ideal vehicle for Mr. Clooney is that everything he has to do in the film is just the smallest shade of difference away from his familiar amiable persona. Movie-star performing is a peculiar, poorly understood subset of the art of acting: it relies on a certain constancy of personality, on the ability to seem at all times as if you were simply playing yourself and to give the audience the illusion that they, somehow, know you — you the person, not just you the character.

For actors like Mr. Clooney, who work without the benefit of wigs and false noses and exotic accents, the line between self and character can be mighty thin. In the olden days — i.e., the studio era, when all but the most ornery contract players made several films a year and did what their bosses told them — popular actors were deliberately confined to a fairly narrow range of parts: typecast, so that moviegoers would always get more or less what they expected when they plunked down their two bits for a Cagney gangster picture, say, or a Gary Cooper western.

Successful actors have a lot more power now. If they choose to, they can typecast themselves — as action heroes, for example, or romantic-comedy leading men. Early in his film career, after the television series “ER” had made him an official hot property, Mr. Clooney toyed with some of the more conventional types: as a romantic comedian, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, in the pleasant but inconsequential “One Fine Day” (1996); as a stolid, Harrison Ford-like man of action, in uniform, in the dull “Peacemaker” (1997); and even, God help him, as a comic-book superhero, in the catastrophic “Batman & Robin” (1997).

When he finally found a role in which he looked entirely at ease, it was in a film that was neither a standard-issue piece of studio entertainment nor quite an offbeat indie, but something in between: Steven Soderbergh’s tricky comic caper movie “Out of Sight” (1998), based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and with all the noirish eccentricity that implies. Mr. Leonard’s skewed world, in which competence, wit and unfussy romance are highly prized — and constantly endangered, because there are always way too many thugs and morons about — turns out to be an environment in which Mr. Clooney (if not his character) can thrive.

His performance is all sly looks and bone-dry readings, held together by a general air of barely contained exasperation at the antics of the fools and knaves who surround him. And although he’s a thief and an escaped convict, he looks with undisguised admiration at the United States marshal who’s trying to bring him to justice: she knows her job, and she’s Jennifer Lopez besides.

His style in “Out of Sight” is too elusive, too stylized — it’s like lowlife Restoration comedy — to serve as a repeatable, bankable star persona, but it’s the foundation, in a way, for everything good he’s done since then, the theme on which he works his small, increasingly subtle variations. The larcenous gulf war soldier he plays in David O. Russell’s inventive “Three Kings” (1999) is a tougher, slightly bitterer version of his “Out of Sight” character, and it fits.

And Danny Ocean, the suave criminal he has played in Mr. Soderbergh’s neo-Rat Pack heist comedies “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001), “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004) and “Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007), is the blither, cooler model, with better clothes and better luck. But the Ocean movies, which are among the few box-office hits Mr. Clooney has had, are really the only occasions in the past decade in which he has indulged in purely personality-based acting, allowed himself the luxury of movie-star nonchalance. (And he still manages to break more of a sweat than Frank Sinatra did in the original 1960 “Ocean’s Eleven.”)

He hasn’t typecast himself, really. It’s fairer to say that he has chosen his roles with an extremely canny awareness of his range, which doesn’t extend to the more outré regions of human behavior. (We have Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis for that.) Even his nutty comic turns in the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000) and “Burn After Reading” (2008) are relatively restrained, especially compared with the out-there performing styles of his fellow cast members.

You wouldn’t want to see him as Richard III, and he’s smart enough not to try. He works the territory of 21st-century American normality, playing — now, at 48 — middle-aged men who are good at what they do and getting by, for the moment, but are beginning to feel stirrings of doubt and dread. These days there are quite a few of those guys around, and they aren’t all the same guy either. Ryan Bingham is one of them, of course, but his slow-dawning suspicion that traveling light might not be all there is to life is a different order of dissatisfaction from the mortal panic felt by Bob Barnes, the C.I.A. field operative Mr. Clooney plays in Stephen Gaghan’s 2005 “Syriana.”

In that film he strays about as far from recognizability as he ever has — though it’s not, in truth, that far. He’s chunkier than usual, more rumpled, wearier-looking, and he sports a beard that he appears not to pay a lot of attention to: the beard of a man who has spent too much time chasing terrorists in the brutal heat and tumult of the Middle East and can’t be bothered to shave. He’s disguised just enough, it seems, for the academy to notice that he’s acting: he won a supporting actor Oscar for the performance.

Whenever an actor as nuanced and unostentatious as Mr. Clooney receives an Academy Award, it’s a bit of a shock, because the academy tends to favor gaudier, more obviously strenuous stuff: the big, sloppy emotions Mr. Clooney doesn’t traffic in. (If he’s nominated, the best-actor race could be particularly interesting, because another likely frontrunner, Jeff Bridges of “Crazy Heart,” is that sort of actor too.)

Being a movie star has its creative pitfalls, chief among them narcissism and laziness. If all you have to do is play your own wonderful self, you needn’t expend much time or energy trying to bring a character to screen life — a unique human being with specific, maybe interesting, quirks and problems. You fall for your own self-created illusion. But if an actor can avoid that trap, there are serious benefits to movie stardom too, and Mr. Clooney seems to know how to exploit the advantage his good looks and charm have given him. The unfair fact is that his kind of appeal can be a fast track to character, like one of those express lines frequent fliers enjoy.

Movie stars don’t have to work for the audience’s attention; they’ve got it as soon as they appear on screen, and once they have it, they can, if they have the inclination and the chops, go about their proper business of exploring behavior in its minutest, most unpredictable particulars. That’s what George Clooney does in “Up in the Air,” while seeming only to be himself.

And it’s what he did in his first best-actor-nominated performance a couple of years ago, as the title character in Tony Gilroy’s dark corporate thriller “Michael Clayton” (2007). In that movie Mr. Clooney plays a depressed and disappointed man: an ex-cop who fixes messy situations for a giant New York law firm and never lets his ambivalence show. Never, that is, until the very end, when, after some unsatisfying, compromised version of justice has been achieved through Clayton’s efforts, he allows himself to relax a little at last.

He flags a taxi, slumps into the back seat and tells the cabbie to drive, and it’s only then that you understand how eloquent Mr. Clooney’s body language has been throughout the preceding two hours — how tensely he’s been holding himself, how warily he’s been sizing up his dangerous world. As he sits in the cab, just riding, the camera stays on him for two full minutes. He does nothing, apparently. His expression hardly changes. But you can feel the weight of what he’s been through in his blankness, his emptied-out eyes. You can’t stop looking at him. It’s a great, daring piece of acting. Only a movie star could get away with it.

"The Life", de Walter Kirn, o el origen de "Up in the Air"

The soldiers and sailors may keep America free, but it's the guys who have no idea what time it is back home or where they are who keep America rich. They are the new American businessmen, and they are the foot soldiers on the front line of the new economy. But who are they, and where are they taking us? Walter Kirn meets the troops

By Walter Kirn

junio 2000

In June 2000, GQ Literary Editor Walter Kirn wrote a piece of journalism for GQ called "The Life." It was this story that inspired Kirn to write the novel Up in the Air. For two weeks, Kirn flew back and forth across America—and sat in more than a few business-class lounges in cities from Denver to Dallas to Chicago—to hear the stories of the men who would become Ryan Bingham.

We are pleased to reprint it here.

***

It's sleeting, and the troops aren't going anywhere. Denver International Airport, the major hub for the western United States and a forward base for the war effort code-named Operation New Economy, is out of commission this Monday morning. Paralyzed. Canceled flights clog the monitors, eyed by platoons of anxious businessmen who aren't going to make it to the front this morning. According to a voice on the PA, descending planes are taking on coats of ice, and one slid off the runway a couple of hours ago. I can see it on the tarmac being towed while, all around, men in orange vests atop booms spray other frozen aircraft with gallon upon gallon of deicer.

Inside United Airlines' Red Carpet Club East, a sort of legion hall for frequent fliers feeling strung out and lonely between missions, Peter Zelter is desperate for a drink. He should be in Los Angeles by now, connecting with a commuter flight to Oxnard, where he's supposed to meet up with a sales rep for the medical-systems division of Siemens, his company. Peter's job is demonstrating equipment—high-end X-ray machines, to be precise, which go for up to $1 million apiece—and if his rep is going to make a sale, Peter needs to be there, showing off the unit. To add to the pressure, Peter's division is under orders from the upper echelons to achieve a "flatter line" in its quarter-to-quarter revenue curve, meaning it needs to boost its springtime sales to match its traditionally stronger autumn performance.

Peter holds out a Visa card to Dennis, one of the bartenders, and asks if he can run a tab. No dice. With all the club members jamming the phones with tense, excuse-filled calls to pissed-off bosses, harried subordinates and impatient clients, the bar's credit-card terminal can't get a line out. Worse, the ATMs are down. More frustrating still, the TV behind the bar has ugly news: the third-worst point drop to date for the NASDAQ.

Morale is low in the Red Carpet Club, and Peter jokes that he'll have to curb his drinking. He calls for bourbon, slaps down a couple of bills and talks bout his life aloft—the life of a corporate airborne commando.

"I don't know what day it is half the time," he says, estimating his annual air travel at 120,000 miles. "My work's never done. I work in my hotel room. I rarely go out. My friends think I've got a great job, but traveling isn't glamorous. I go to a lot of cities, but I never see them." Peter laps his bourbon for a moment as CNBC reporters recap the market drop and a man at a nearby table boots up a laptop to check his portfolio in real time. The battle maps change quickly in this conflict; it's crucial to have the latest intelligence.

Peter orders a second drink. "A lot of people don't understand what it is to be a traveler like this. It's a lot of headaches and hassles. Checking into a room that's crappy and has never been cleaned, getting that middle seat in the exit row that doesn't recline between two guys who are bigger than I am." Another gripe is the rudeness of fellow passengers, particularly those who sit up front and expect to be treated like top brass. Air rage is real; peter sees it all the time. He watched a guy out a flight attendant because she didn't have his brand of beer.

Peter boots up his Cassiopeia PDA and calls up a calendar. He taps the calendar's squares with a stylus. New Jersey. South Carolina. Houston. Back to Denver. Then on to Oxnard. Then on to San Diego. "I've been living like this for two years," says Peter. "When I talk to friends, I have to look at the hotel phone to tell them where I am."

Since I already know the answer, it's no use asking him why he doesn't just ground himself. I've spent three days in the club, talking with men like Peter, morning till evening, soaking up the radiation from their cell phones and laptops and pagers and PDAs. The gear makes them virtual cyborgs, robofliers; they're perpetually alert to beeps and buzzes that go off in their pockets, on their belts. They're always connecting, these guys, these plugged-in mercenaries, and yet they're always disconnecting—from family, from friends, from the whole civilian world. The only people who sympathize, they say, are others who've been to the front and know the life. That's what they call it: the life. It's soldier talk.

For a lot of them, living the life is not a choice. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. And though these guys are always swearing, like shell-shocked combatants in a Hemingway novel, that they see themselves settling down in a couple of years (it's always "a couple," for some reason, never "a few"; two is the magic number of denial), and though they're constantly singing the praises of home-cooked meals and familiar mattresses, they also report that the when they've tried to stop, tried to demobilize, it hasn't worked. The blare of distant trumpets calls them back.

"Going from this to working in a cubicle might be tough for me," says Peter. "Sometimes, if I have five days or a week off, I'm at a loss." He's 31, and at least he knows himself. The reason he has an apartment, not a house, is that he can't see himself spending his precious time off watering the lawn and cleaning gutters. Indeed, he has one friend, another gung ho traveler, who let his lease lapse and is basically homeless, living from hotel suite to hotel suite.

Another bourbon. Sleet still coming down. The NASDAQ off 180 points. Worse, Peter left his pager at home today.

All it takes is a little ice, sometimes, to stop an advancing army in its tracks.

The traveling salesman isn't what he used to be—a figure of populist Americana who hung a clothes rack in his Buick's backseat, loaded up the trunk with samples and set off into the roadside wilderness of coffee shops, offices, barrooms and motels to sell his wares, and himself, to all and sundry. Arthur Miller memorialized his desperation; Sinclair Lewis satirized his optimism; Theodore Dreiser celebrated his energy. Salty, down-to-earth and democratic, he was a the guy with a joke for every waitress, a grin and a nudge in the ribs for every bellhop. He knew everyone; everyone knew him. He built relationships. When he died, a hundred letters of condolence flooded in to his widow. A sort of commercial Johnny Appleseed, he wore out pairs of shoes and sets of tires covering his territory.

His counterpart today is far more insulated. He lives in the sky and in members-only airline clubs, alighting on earth only temporarily, where the first thing he does is find a telephone jack so he can tap into cyberspace. He's in the world, but not of it. He moves too fast. He doesn't mix with the common people; he skims along above their heads, pressing hot towels to his forehead in first-class cabins or sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice on one of those "executive" hotel floors that require a special key for access. He thinks of himself as belonging to an elite group, and nearly every move he makes, from using his credit card to renting a car, garners him new entitlements, new privileges. He's Willy Highman, literally. A god. Or so he's told by the myriad reservation agents who constitute his chief contacts with humanity.

Inside himself he knows otherwise. He's still the guy in the Buick, pushing, pushing. He still has to eat what's put in front of him and dress for the day in his cleanest dirty shirt. And he's still far from home, obliged to get results and terrified of returning empty-handed. Nothing has really changed, except his separateness. Instead of being down among the people, he's up there in the clouds somewhere, cut off, where no one can follow because he's leaving no footprints.

When the paper reports a rise in productivity or when that growth fund in your IRA shoots up, pause for a moment and think of them: the "fulfillment" manager for Nordstrom.com who flies around negotiating shipping rates with express-delivery services, the itinerant CEO-for-rent who takes young computer companies in hand, the entrepreneur who sells advertising space on the walls of airline lounges like the Red Carpet club. And what do they get for this back-and-forth existence that carries the flag of progress and prosperity from city to city, state to state? A few gold stars in the form of frequent-flier miles.

What makes this a truly military culture, besides its overwhelming maleness, its air of emotional deprivation and the lousy rations, is its obsession with rank and hierarchy. Like jungle gorillas, business travelers always know where they stand versus the rest of the group. In this parallel universe of upgrade vouchers and priority-boarding privileges, everyone has a number and a position, and who gets that open aisle seat in first class means even more on the road then who earns what. Money is just a symbol, after all, but Premier Executive status on United can get you extra legroom. And a free cup of coffee in the Red Carpet club.

The club is a curious place, a sort of holding cell masquerading as an officers' club. The sense of importance it offers is a mirage. Ever since the invention of frequent-flier miles, those insidiously addictive New Age green stamps, airlines have been at the vanguard of what are know in the marketing trade as "loyalty programs." Be true to us, and we'll be true to you. The airlines know what their customers forget, though; that such perks, in reality, aren't perks at all but accounting gimmicks priced into every ticket, and their psychological value far exceeds their economic worth.

Like time off for good behavior or extra shore leave, frequent-flier miles are tools of discipline that work by promoting the illusion of freedom. Because, face it' For the troops in the Red Carpet club, loyalty to United is not an option. The airline holds a near monopoly on connections through Denver. Fly United or go Greyhound. It's pretty humiliating, if you think about it.

The club and the other loyalty programs offer a way not to think about it. The members are conscripts twice over, for the most part—forced to travel by their companies and forced to travel United by United—but the armchairs, the pretzels and the laptop ports make them feel like captains of industry. That's why American calls its lounge the Admirals club and why Delta calls its club the Crown room. The essence of motivational science 2000 is convincing galley slaves that they're steering the ship.

"I was supposed to go to Boston today. Then that changed on Friday," says Erick Horn, a project manager for an Internet company whose exact nature he's hard put to explain and whose major client, a Big Three auto company, he's wary about naming lest the enemy get a jump on him. "Of course, I'd made the reservations on Thursday. Then they said the meeting was in Detroit. I had to cancel my hotel in Boston and make a reservation at a Detroit hotel, but the one I normally stay at was sold out. Then I had to reserve a car because the airport is so far from the city." Sometimes, Erik says, he'll cross the country for a two-hour meeting, then fly home that night.

As much as any person who wishes to remain a Homo sapiens rather than become a bionic silicon hybrid can, Eric has adapted to the life. He belongs to a nationwide chain of fitness centers so he can maintain his muscled torso wherever he happens to touch down. He supplements his sporadic meals with protein bars, which and the "team members" he leads and travels with order over their laptops from a company that FedExes the bars to whatever location they're in. He drinks a lot of water to stay hydrated and keeps his weight down by removing buns from airline sandwiches.

Sitting perfectly upright in his armchair, Erik tells a teammate to check the monitors, then discourses on the vast promise of E-commerce; he's confident and cadetlike, a starship trooper. He's also a living rebuke to the idea that young men go soft and sloppy in times of peace. The warrior instinct, in healthy American males, is a constant; it can't be turned off, just redirected. Maybe that's why other countries fear us most in periods of calm, when our guys hit the beach bearing cell phones instead of hand grenades.

Erik's challenge is teaching his loved one on the home front to adapt to him. At 33 he's newly engaged, but talk of relationships darkens his shining face. "When your partner doesn't travel for her job," he says, "it's hard for her to understand that when you're away, you're working. The interruption of contact makes things hard."

Chad Schmidt, 24, is part of Erik's team. He's a Web-site designer, Cornell educated, with a nerdy, permanently single look and formless, fashion-free Bill Gates-style hair. "Girlfriend? Always looking," he says curtly. "It's hard. It's really hard." He has a friend who flies as much as he does and picks up women form port to port, but he's had no luck. He should keep trying; from what I've heard in the club these past few days, frequent fliers can be a swinging bunch. They're always up for a brief encounter in their favorite Courtyard by Marriot. One imagines them in bed beneath bad paintings, a soft-core pay-per-view flick on the tube, wine chilling in a plastic bucket. Live for today; tomorrow you die. Or get hung up in Oxnard, without a rental car.

Marching in Americas' laptop army has taken a physical toll on Chad.

"Planes are a gestation vessel for germs and sickness. I used to get sick a lot," he says. There's more: "I've developed neck problems from sleeping with my chin on my chest on planes and looking down at my laptop. I have to get physical therapy now." Other than his aches and pains and his lack of a social life beyond the team, though, he says he's grown accustomed to life in uniform. He claims he's even found a Zen-like peace in admitting his powerlessness over travel hassles. "When we're in Miami or something, I say just get me going west. I'll get home eventually."

Chad calls this "life at the speed of business." But instead of resenting the pace set by Erik and the company, he's grateful for having learned to push his limits. There's the money, too. Chad brings out a folder from Toyota and shows me the dream SUV he hopes to own, ticking off his desired options as though he were describing that ideal woman who he's resigned himself to not meeting. " I'm waiting for our stock to hit fifty so I can buy it," he says. He sounds a bit wistful about this minor hope, partly because of the plunging NASDAQ and partly because he knows that, with his schedule, he'll rarely get to drive the vehicle. The Toyota is like those frequent-flier miles: a mostly imaginary incentive.

Life at the speed of business has changed Chad, and sometimes he wonders if it's for the better. "Alan Greenspan is talking about interest rates tomorrow. Two years ago, if I thought I'd be interested in that, I'd have jumped out a window." He settles his hands on the ergonomic backpack that carries his electronic survival gear. "Eventually, I'll marry and have a kid and get a minivan. I grew up in a California town like where the Beav grew up. I like that environment."

Small-town bliss will have to wait, though; the sleet's letting up and it's time to ride, says Erik, shifting into combat mode. Chad slings on his backpack, stretches his cramped neck. Semper Fi, marine.

But is it worth it? Looking around the club as the weather clears and the men get moving again, snatching up Tumi briefcases like parachutes and guzzling a last few ounces of black coffee, one wonders if there's an exit strategy for this battle. Guys burn out, rest up, then jump back in. Homecomings are perennially postponed. Will there ever be dancing in the streets? A joyous Times Square ticker-tape parade? Men worked hard in the 1950s, too, but the goal was a martini on the patio at the end of the day, a weekend camping trip. The Red Carpet brigades have different goals, and it's a good question they'll ever meet them, ever find time to barbecue a steak and toss around a baseball with the kids. No matter how often Chairman Greenspan raises interest rates, even he can't get these flyboys to slow down, to ease up on their pursuit of more free miles.

In explaining the country's overheated economy, the blame and the credit routinely go to soaring tech stocks and the Internet. Me, I wonder if it's not the airlines' fault. Maybe they're the ones who struck the match. Maybe their loyalty programs have caused the madness. A man can have enough money, after all, but there's no such thing as having enough miles.

--

Willy Loman faced the world with nothing but a shoeshine and a smile. In the Red Carpet club, men are better equipped for the salesman's life of nonstop travel. Besides all the high-tech gear they tote around, there are the cards.

Craig Story keeps a special book, a sort of photo album, for all his cards. They're framed in plastic pockets, dozens of them, gold and silver and platinum and diamond, entitling him to Marriott Miles, to VIP service at car-rental counters, to first-class upgrades on airline after airline. The cards are heraldic tokens of Craig's rank, and someday, when his children ask him what he did in the war for global prosperity, he'll take the medals out and lay them on the bed the way a veteran would a box of medals. And I won this one for flying United Airlines every other day for seven years…

Blond, broad shouldered, all handshake and white teeth, Craig is the sort of gee-whiz superspokesman familiar from late-night cable TV infomercials. He owns his own company, Pure Water Technology, and has sworn a blood oath against bacteria, heavy metals and other contaminants, which he feels are slowly poisoning America. When talking up the water-filtration devices he places in factories and hospitals, he refers to germs as CFUs (colony-forming units) and warns me against drinking from office water jugs.

Today Craig is on his way home to Idaho after a visit to Columbus, Ohio, where his filtration units are manufactured. Idaho is where his wife and kids live and where he hangs out with Mark Fuhrman, a neighbor ("He can drink some beer!" Craig says), but his true, spiritual home is here: comfy leather armchair at the club, surrounded by other "1K" business fliers with seat-back-molded spines and ticker-tape eyes. In fact, Craig doesn't even have to be here. He made enough money to retire with his first business, selling dispensers for chemicals used in sterilizing microchips. He's here because when he tried to leave "the life," he couldn't decelerate, couldn't' stop the buzzing. One way to deal with the post-traumatic stress is to reenlist.

Craig likes to feel he has gained a certain perspective from his time off between tours. He nods at a conference table where a young man is talking on a hands-free cell phone—he looks like a schizophrenic, addressing thin air—while simultaneously pecking at a laptop. "I see these people and I think, That's the mode I was in. You start speeding up. You go, go, go, twenty-four-seven. You build up to this frenzy." Craig pours beer from a bottle into a glass and watches the foam subside as he reflects. "I traveled all around the U.S. and the world, but it feels like I didn't see much. I knew it was time to get out when I was walking through an airport and I though, I know everybody here."

This epiphany soon went poof, of course. "I didn't know what to do with myself. You don't realize how ramped up you are," Craig says. As if to prove this, he launches another sales pitch, hyping me on a device he's invented—the Health Energizer—that runs on two D batteries and somehow wipes out germs and viruses by adjusting the body's electric field. It's going to change modern medicine, Craig says, and he can't wait to hit the road promoting it.

He checks his watch; his connection should be boarding. This chance to discuss his products makes him glad, he says, that he missed his scheduled morning flight. I ask him why he missed it. A dumb mistake, he says. When he landed in Denver a couple of hours ago, the flight attendant told him the wrong local time.

The Red Carpet Club is half-empty. It's getting late. A few lonely fliers gather at the bar, sighing and drumming their fingers while their drinks are mixed. Unlike most other airline lounges, the club charges member for alcoholic beverages, and they rarely fail to whine about it to Dennis, one of the club's long-suffering bartenders.

When it comes to absorbing crap from citizen soldiers whose spouses resent them for missing Junior's soccer games, whose commanders are on the warpath for flatter sales curves, whose vertebrae pop like Rice Krispies when they sit down and whose chief consolation for all this grief is the hollow title of Premier Exec, Dennis is a champ. You can't pull rank on him.

"This one guy is eating at the bar, and I say, 'Sorry, you can't eat here,' and he says, 'Hey, I fly 50,000 miles a year,' and I almost said 'BFD.' " Even celebrities don't turn Dennis's head, and he's served some of the legends, from Wayne Newton to Diana Ross. "The only thing that impresses me is size," he says. "When David Robinson sits in these leather chairs, his knees are parallel with his shoulders."

The world Dennis sees from behind his bar is frantic, perpetually running late and booming. The Premier Execs are making a killing despite their complaints about the price of Buds. They look right through Dennis at CNBC and pump their fists when Cisco hits new highs. They're cocky. They're psyched. Like the kid from San Francisco who flew in today to sell security software to Denver Internet concern. His start-up goes public soon, and he can't wait. Or that older fellow, an aging hippie type who specializes in something called wireless networking and is leaving Intel a multimillionaire and jumping into a hush-hush project. The worst was that guy with a stock tip—Monster.com—who asked Dennis weeks later if he'd bought it. Dennis hadn't. The stock had doubled. Damn.

In his midfifties and worried about retirement, Dennis feels a bit left out sometimes. He's surrounded by furious action, yet here he stands, a guy who spends his weekends delivering bowling balls to alleys and pro shops for extra dough. He figures he ahs ten years to build a nest egg, so he keeps an ear out in the club for investment advice. It isn't going well. He heard about biotechs, bought some, and they tanked. "You know what's sick?" he says. "I had my money in a blue-chip fund, and I took it out because it wasn't moving and put it all in the NASDAQ. Now that's down."

He wipes out a glass. A heavy fellow shows up, setting his Nokia cell phone on the bar and his laptop case on the next stool. He bitches about a missed connection to Boston, opens his wallet, removes a Platinum AmEx.

"Sorry," Dennis says, "we can't take cards today." The Premier Exec grunts and forks over a crisp new hundred.

"You know, my other clubs don't charge for drinks," he says.

Dennis knows, but I doubt he sympathizes. He's just a civilian. He leads a simple life.

He doesn't have to take orders from these guys.

30th Annual London Film Critics’ Circle Awards

^{The full nominations are:}

Film Of The Year

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

A Prophet

The White Ribbon

Up In TheAir

The Attenborough Award: British Film Of The Year

Bright Star

An Education

Fish Tank

In The Loop

Moon

Foreign Language Film Of The Year

The Class

Katyn

Let the Right One In

A Prophet

The White Ribbon

Director Of The Year

Jacques Audiard - A Prophet

Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker

James Cameron – Avatar

Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon

Jason Reitman - Up in the Air

British Director Of The Year

Andrea Arnold - Fish Tank

Armando Iannucci - In the Loop

Duncan Jones – Moon

Kevin Macdonald - State of Play

Sam Taylor-Wood - Nowhere Boy

Actor Of The Year

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart

George Clooney - Up in the Air

Tahar Rahim - A Prophet

Michael Stuhlbarg - A Serious Man

Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

Actress Of The Year

Abbie Cornish - Bright Star

Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air

Mo’Nique– Precious

Carey Mulligan - An Education

Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

British Actor Of The Year

Peter Capaldi - In the Loop

Colin Firth - A Single Man

Tom Hardy – Bronson

Christian MacKay - Me and Orson Welles

Andy Serkis - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

British Actress Of The Year

Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria

Helen Mirren - The Last Station

Carey Mulligan - An Education

Katie Jarvis - Fish Tank

Kristin Scott Thomas - Nowhere Boy

British Actor In a Supporting Role

Michael Fassbender* - Fish Tank

John Hurt - 44 Inch Chest

Jason Isaacs – Good

Alfred Molina - An Education

Timothy Spall - The Damned United

British Actress In A Supporting Role

Emily Blunt - Sunshine Cleaning

Anne-Marie Duff - Nowhere Boy

Rosamund Pike - An Education

Kierston Wareing - Fish Tank

Olivia Williams - An Education

Screenwriter Of The Year

Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci & Tony Roche - In the Loop

Thomas Bidegain & Jacques Audiard - A Prophet

Joel & Ethan Coen - A Serious Man

Michael Haneke - The White Ribbon

Nick Hornby - An Education

The NSPCC Award: Young British Performer Of The Year

Katie Jarvis - Fish Tank

Aaron Johnson - Nowhere Boy and Dummy

George MacKay - The Boys Are Back

Bill Milner - Is Anybody There? and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

Saoirse Ronan* - The Lovely Bones

Breakthrough Film-maker Of The Year

Daniel Barber - Harry Brown

Armando Ianucci - In the Loop

Duncan Jones – Moon

Peter Strickland - Katalin Varga

Sam Taylor-Wood - Nowhere Boy

Dilys Powell Award For Excellence In Cinema

Quentin Tarantino

Premios de la Crítica de los Estados Unidos: Florida, Houston, Detroit, Utah, Golden Satellites

Florida

Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air” led the Florida Film Critics’ Association’s annual awards, taking best picture, director and actor honors. The complete list of winners is below.

Picture: Up In The Air
Actor: George Clooney, Up In The Air
Actress: Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious
Director: Jason Reitman, Up In The Air
Screenplay: Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, (500) Days of Summer
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore, Avatar
Foreign Language: Sin Nombre
Animated Feature: Up
Documentary: The Cove
Breakout: Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Houston

Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actor: George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air”
Best Animated Film: “Up”
Best Cinematography: Barry Ackroyd, “The Hurt Locker”
Best Documentary: “The Cove”
Best Foreign Film: “Sin Nombre”
Best Original Score: Michael Giacchino, “Up”
Best Original Song: Petey’s Song by Jarvis Cocker, Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach, “Fantastic Mr. Fox”

Utah

Best Picture
Up in the Air
(runners-up: The Hurt Locker; Inglourious Basterds)

Best Achievement in Directing
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
(runner-up: John Hillcoat, The Road)

Best Male Lead Performance
Viggo Mortensen, The Road
(runner-up: Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker)

Best Female Lead Performance
Carey Mulligan, An Education
(runner-up: Maya Rudolph, Away We Go)

Best Male Supporting Performance
Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles
(runner-up: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds)

Best Supporting Performance by an Actress
Mo’Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire
(runner-up: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air)

Best Screenplay
Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Fantastic Mr. Fox
(runners-up: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, (500) Days of Summer; Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds)

Best Animated Feature
Fantastic Mr. Fox
(runner-up: Up)

Best Documentary Feature
The Cove
(runner-up: Anvil! The Story of Anvil)

Best Non-English Language Feature
Thirst
(runner-up: Sin Nombre)

Detroit

Best Film: “Up”
Best Director: Pete Docter, “Up”
Best Actor: Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Best Actress: Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
Best Ensemble: “The Hangover”
Best Breakthrough Performance: Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”

Golden Satellites

Motion Picture, Drama
The Hurt Locker

Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
Nine

Director
Kathryn Bigelow — The Hurt Locker

Actress In A Motion Picture, Drama
Shohreh Aghdashloo — The Stoning of Soraya M.

Actor In A Motion Picture, Drama
Jeremy Renner — The Hurt Locker

Actress In A Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
Meryl Streep — Julie & Julia

Actor In A Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
Michael Stuhlbarg — A Serious Man

Actress In A Supporting Role
Mo’nique — Precious

Actor In A Supporting Role
Christoph Waltz — Inglourious Basterds

Motion Picture, Foreign Language Film
The Maid Chile
Broken Embraces Spain (tie)

Screenplay, Original
Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber — (500) Days of Summer

Screenplay, Adapted
Geoffrey Fletcher — Precious

Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media
Fantastic Mr. Fox

Motion Picture, Documentary
Every Little Step

Original Score
Rolfe Kent Up in the Air

Original Song
“The Weary Kind” — Crazy Heart

Cinematography
Dion Beebe Nine

Visual Effects
2012

Film Editing
The Hurt Locker

Sound (Mixing & Editing)
2012

Art Direction & Production Design
A Single Man

Costume Design
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Premios de la Crítica de los Estados Unidos: Dallas, San Diego, Austin

Dallas Fort Worth Film Critics

Best Picture: Up in the Air
Best Director: Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Best Actor: George Clooney, Up in the Air
Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, An Education
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious
Best Screenplay: Up in the Air
Best Foreign-Language Film: Sin Nombre
Best Documentary: The Cove
Best Animated Film: Up
Best Cinematography: The Lovely Bones
Top Ten:
1. Up in the Air
2. The Hurt Locker
3. Precious
4. Up
5. An Education
6. A Serious Man
7. Inglourious Basterds
8. District 9
9. Avatar
10. Fantastic Mr. Fox

San Diego Film Critics (Ganadores, en negro)

BEST FILM:
500 DAYS OF SUMMER
A SINGLE MAN
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
THE HURT LOCKER
UP IN THE AIR

DIRECTOR:
Coen Brothers, A SERIOUS MAN
Kathryn Bigelow, THE HURT LOCKER
James Cameron, AVATAR
Tom Ford, A SINGLE MAN
Quentin Tarantino, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Jason Reitman, UP IN THE AIR

ACTRESS:
Meryl Streep, JULIE & JULIA
Abbie Cornish, BRIGHT STAR
Michelle Monaghan, TRUCKER
Carey Mulligan, AN EDUCATION
Sandra Bullock, THE BLIND SIDE

ACTOR:
Ben Foster, THE MESSENGER
Christian McKay, ME & ORSON WELLES
Colin Firth, A SINGLE MAN
George Clooney, UP IN THE AIR
Jeremy Renner, THE HURT LOCKER
Matt Damon, THE INFORMANT
Viggo Mortensen, THE ROAD

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Anna Kendrick, UP IN THE AIR
Mo’nique, PRECIOUS
Melanie Laurent, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
Samantha Morton, THE MESSENGER
Vera Farmiga, UP IN THE AIR

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Christoph Waltz, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
John Malkovich, THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD
Paul Schneider, BRIGHT STAR
Stanley Tucci, THE LOVELY BONES
Woody Harrelson, THE MESSENGER

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman, THE MESSENGER
Bob Peterson & Pete Docter, UP
Joel & Ethan Coen, A SERIOUS MAN
Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER
Quentin Tarantino, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, UP IN THE AIR
Nora Ephron, JULIE & JULIA
Scott Z. Burns, THE INFORMANT!
Tom Ford, A SINGLE MAN
Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach, FANTASTIC MR. FOX

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
AMREEKA
CAPTAIN ABU RAED
IL DIVO
RED CLIFF
SIN NOMBRE
THE LEMON TREE
THE STONING OF SOROYA M.
TREELESS MOUNTAIN
THIRST

BEST DOCUMENTARY:
ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
FOOD, INC.
THE COVE
VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Barry Ackroyd, THE HURT LOCKER
Bruno Delbonnel, HARRY POTTER & THE HALF-BLOODTHE PRINCE
Eduard Grau, A SINGLE MAN
Hagan Bogdanski, THE YOUNG VICTORIA
Javier Aguirresarobe, THE ROAD
Robert Richardson, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

BEST ANIMATED FILM:
9
CORALINE
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
MONSTERS VS. ALIENS
UP

BEST EDITING:
Alan Baumgarten, ZOMBIELAND
Alan Edward Bell, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER
Bob Muawski, THE HURT LOCKER
Julian Clarke, DISTRICT 9
Sally Menke, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN:
Anastasia Masaro, IMAGINARIUM OF DR. PARNASSUS
Dan Bishop, A SINGLE MAN
David Wasco, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
K.K. Barrett, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Laurence Dorman, ME AND ORSON WELLES
Rick Carter & Robert Stromberg, AVATAR
Stuart Craig, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

BEST SCORE:
Abel Korzeniowski, A SINGLE MAN
Alexandre Desplat, FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Carter Burwell & Karen O., WHERE WILD THINGS ARE
Ilan Eshkeri, THE YOUNG VICTORIA
Michael Giaccone, UP
Mychael Danna & Rob Simonsen, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER

BEST ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE:
A SERIOUS MAN
HARRY POTTER & THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE
IN THE LOOP
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
THE MESSENGER
UP IN THE AIR
ZOMBIELAND

BODY OF WORK:
Woody Harrelson, THE MESSENGER, ZOMBIELAND & 2012

Austin Film Critics

Best Film: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Colin Firth, A Single Man

Best Actress: Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

Best Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino

Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air, Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker, Barry Ackroyd

Best Original Score: Up, Michael Glacchino

Best Foreign Language Film: Sin Nombre, Cary Fukunaga

Best Documentary: Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Best Animated Feature: Up

Best First Film: District 9, Neill Blomkamp

Breakthrough Artist Award: Christian McKay, Me & Orson Welles

Austin Film Award: Me & Orson Welles

Top 10 Films:

1. The Hurt Locker

2. Star Trek

3. Up

4. A Serious Man

5. Up in the Air

6. Avatar

7. Inglourious Basterds

8. District 9

9. Where the Wild Things Are

10. (tie) Moon, The Messenger

Nominaciones: Chicago Film Critics

BEST PICTURE
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Up in the Air
Where the Wild Things Are

BEST DIRECTOR
Kathryn Bigelow (-) The Hurt Locker
Joel & Ethan Coen (-) A Serious Man
Spike Jonze (-) Where the Wild Things Are
Jason Reitman (-) Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino (-) Inglourious Basterds

BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges (-) Crazy Heart
George Clooney (-) Up in the Air
Matt Damon (-) The Informant!
Jeremy Renner (-) The Hurt Locker
Michael Stuhlbarg (-) A Serious Man

BEST ACTRESS
Abbie Cornish (-) Bright Star
Carey Mulligan (-) An Education
Maya Rudolph (-) Away We Go
Gabourey Sidibe (-) Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Meryl Streep (-) Julie & Julia

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Peter Capaldi (-) In the Loop
Woody Harrelson (-) The Messenger
Christian McKay (-) Me and Orson Welles
Stanley Tucci (-) The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz (-) Inglourious Basterds

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Vera Farmiga (-) Up in the Air
Anna Kendrick (-) Up in the Air
Mo’Nique (-) Precious
Julianne Moore (-) A Single Man
Natalie Portman (-) Brothers

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Away We Go (-) Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida
The Hurt Locker (-) Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds (-) Quentin Tarantino
A Serious Man (-) Joel & Ethan Coen
Up (-) Bob Peterson

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
An Education (-) Nick Hornby
In the Loop (-) Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci & Tony Roche
The Informant! (-) Scott Z. Burns
Up in the Air (-) Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner
Where the Wild Things Are (-) Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Anvil!: The True Story of Anvil
Capitalism: A Love Story
The Cove
Food, Inc.
Tyson

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
Broken Embraces
Red Cliff
Sin Nombre
Summer Hours
The White Ribbon

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Up

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Avatar (-) Mauro Fiore
Bright Star (-) Greig Fraser
The Hurt Locker (-) Barry Ackroyd
Inglourious Basterds (-) Robert Richardson
Where the Wild Things Are (-) Lance Acord

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Avatar (-) James Horner
Fantastic Mr. Fox (-) Alexandre Desplat
The Informant! (-) Marvin Hamlisch
Up (-) Michael Giacchino
Where the Wild Things Are (-) Carter Burwell & Karen Orzolek

MOST PROMISING PERFORMER
Sharlto Copley (-) District 9
Christian McKay (-) Me and Orson Welles
Carey Mulligan (-) An Education
Max Records (-) Where the Wild Things Are
Gabourey Sidibe (-) Precious

MOST PROMISING FILMMAKER
Neill Blomkamp (-) District 9
Scott Cooper (-) Crazy Heart
Cary Fukunaga (-) Sin Nombre
Duncan Jones (-) Moon
Marc Webb (-) (500) Days of Summer

Nominaciones a los Globo de Oro

Best Motion Picture -- Drama
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up in the Air

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture -- Drama
Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabire Sadibe, Precious

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture -- Drama
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Tobey Maguire, Brothers

Best Motion Picture -- Musical or Comedy
(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It's Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture -- Musical or Comedy
Sandra Bullock, The Proposal
Marion Cotillard, Nine
Julia Roberts, Duplicity
Meryl Streep, It's Complicated
Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture -- Musical or Comedy
Matt Damon, The Informant
Daniel Day Lewis, Nine
Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon Levitt, (500) Days of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg, A Serious Man

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Mo-Nique, Precious
Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Penelope Cruz, Nine

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
Matt Damon, Invictus
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Christopher Waltz, Inglorious Basterds
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Best Animated Feature Film
Coraline
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
The Princess and the Frog
Up

Best Foreign Language Film
La nana
Baaria
Broken Embraces
A Prophet
The White Ribbon

Best Director -- Motion Picture
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Clint Eastwood, Invictus
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds

Best Screenplay -- Motion Picture
Up in the Air
It's Complicated
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds

BEST SCORE
Michael Giacchino - "Up"
Marvin Hamlisch - "The Informant!"
James Horner - "Avatar"
Abel Korzeniowski - "A Single Man"
Karen O, Carter Burwell - "Where The Wild Things Are

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Cinema Italiano" from "Nine" - Music & Lyrics by: Maury Yeston
"I Want to Come Home" from "Everybody's Fine" - Music & Lyrics by: Paul McCartney
"I Will See You" from "Avatar" - Music by: James Horner, Simon Franglen; Lyrics by: James Horner, Simon Franglen, Kuk Harrell
"The Weary Kind" from "Crazy Heart" - Music & Lyrics by: Ryan Bingham, T Bone Burnett
"Winter" from "Brothers" - Music by: U2; Lyrics by: Bono

BFCA announces its nominees (Variety)

Weinstein Co. pics "Inglourious Basterds" and "Nine" each scored 10 nominations and will lead the charge at the upcoming Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

Selected by the Broadcast Film Critics Assn., both films were also selected for best picture along with "Avatar," "An Education," "The Hurt Locker," "Invictus," "Precious," "A Serious Man," "Up" and "Up in the Air."

In the lead actor race, noms were handed out to Jeff Bridges for "Crazy Heart," George Clooney for "Up in the Air," Colin Firth for "A Single Man," Morgan Freeman for "Invictus," Viggo Mortensen for "The Road" and Jeremy Renner for "The Hurt Locker."

On the distaff side, lead actresses selected were Emily Blunt in "The Young Victoria," Sandra Bullock in "The Blind Side," Carey Mulligan in "An Education," Saoirse Ronan in "The Lovely Bones," Gabourey Sidibe in "Precious" and Meryl Streep in "Julie & Julia."

Directors tabbed were Kathryn Bigelow for "The Hurt Locker," James Cameron for "Avatar," Lee Daniels for "Precious," Clint Eastwood for "Invictus," Jason Reitman for "Up in the Air" and Quentin Tarantino for "Inglourious Basterds."

The org historically selects six noms for many of the major categories.

Following the 10 noms each for "Inglorious Basterds" and "Nine," "Avatar" — Cameron’s $300-plus million sci-fi epic from 20th Century Fox that opens Friday — landed nine noms.

The Critics’ Choice Movie Awards was, so far, the best kudo showing for Rob Marshall’s "Nine," which failed to make the American Film Institute top 10 list announced Sunday. Also from the film, Marion Cotillard was nominated for supporting actress, even though the Weinstein Co. has been pushing her in the lead category for the Oscar race. Academy Award voters are allowed to choose whatever category they think is most appropriate.

Sunday was a good day for "The Hurt Locker," which also picked up top pic prizes from the Los Angeles and Boston film critics. Bigelow was selected as best helmer by both groups as well.

The BFCA have undergone a major change for this year’s awards show. Org changed the name of its kudocast to the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards and moved the venue from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to the Hollywood Palladium. In addition, they added eight categories to make it more similar to the Oscars.

Show, hosted by Kristin Chenoweth, airs at 9 p.m. Jan. 15 and is currently in the final year of a pact with VH1. Cabler and sister net MTV simulcast red carpet coverage prior to the telecast.

Last year the BFCA was in line with the Oscars as both tabbed "Slumdog Millionaire" as top pic, as well director Danny Boyle and writer Simon Beaufoy.

BFCA is made up of 235 members representing TV, radio and online.

The full nomination list:

BEST PICTURE

"Avatar"

"An Education"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Invictus"

"Nine"

"Precious"

"A Serious Man"

"Up"

"Up In The Air"

BEST ACTOR

Jeff Bridges – "Crazy Heart"

George Clooney – "Up In The Air"

Colin Firth – "A Single Man"

Morgan Freeman – "Invictus"

Viggo Mortensen – "The Road"

Jeremy Renner – "The Hurt Locker"

BEST ACTRESS

Emily Blunt – "The Young Victoria"

Sandra Bullock – "The Blind Side"

Carey Mulligan – "An Education"

Saoirse Ronan – "The Lovely Bones"

Gabourey Sidibe – "Precious"

Meryl Streep – "Julie & Julia"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Matt Damon – "Invictus"

Woody Harrelson – "The Messenger"

Christian McKay – "Me And Orson Welles"

Alfred Molina – "An Education"

Stanley Tucci – "The Lovely Bones"

Christoph Waltz – "Inglourious Basterds"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Marion Cotillard – "Nine"

Vera Farmiga – "Up In The Air"

Anna Kendrick – "Up In The Air"

Mo’Nique – "Precious"

Julianne Moore – "A Single Man"

Samantha Morton – "The Messenger"

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS

Jae Head – "The Blind Side"

Bailee Madison – "Brothers"

Max Records – "Where The Wild Things Are"

Saoirse Ronan – "The Lovely Bones"

Kodi Smit-McPhee – "The Road"

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Nine"

"Precious"

"Star Trek"

"Up in the Air"

BEST DIRECTING

Kathryn Bigelow – "The Hurt Locker"

James Cameron – "Avatar"

Lee Daniels – "Precious"

Clint Eastwood – "Invictus"

Jason Reitman – "Up In The Air"

Quentin Tarantino – "Inglourious Basterds"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Mark Boal – "The Hurt Locker"

Joel Coen & Ethan Coen – "A Serious Man"

Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber – "(500) Days Of Summer"

Bob Peterson, Peter Docter – "Up"

Quentin Tarantino – "Inglourious Basterds"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach – "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell – "District 9"

Geoffrey Fletcher – "Precious"

Tom Ford, David Scearce – "A Single Man"

Nick Hornby – "An Education"

Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner – "Up In The Air"

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Barry Ackroyd – "The Hurt Locker"

Dion Beebe – "Nine"

Mauro Fiore – "Avatar"

Andrew Lesnie – "The Lovely Bones"

Robert Richardson – "Inglourious Basterds"

BEST ART DIRECTION

Dan Bishop – "A Single Man"

Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg – "Avatar"

John Myhre, Gordon Sim – "Nine"

Naomi Shohan, George De Titta, Jr. – "The Lovely Bones"

David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds Wasco – "Inglourious Basterds"

BEST EDITING

Dana E. Glauberman – "Up In The Air"

Sally Menke – "Inglourious Basterds"

Bob Murawski, Chris Innis – "The Hurt Locker"

Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua, James Cameron – "Avatar"

Claire Simpson, Wyatt Smith – "Nine"

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Colleen Atwood – "Nine"

Janet Patterson – "Bright Star"

Sandy Powell – "The Young Victoria"

Anna Sheppard – "Inglourious Basterds"

Casey Storm – "Where The Wild Things Are"

BEST MAKEUP

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"Nine"

"The Road"

"Star Trek"

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"The Lovely Bones"

"Star Trek"

"2012"

BEST SOUND

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Nine"

"Star Trek"

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

"Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs"

"Coraline"

"Fantastic Mr. Fox"

"Princess And The Frog"

"Up"

BEST ACTION MOVIE

"Avatar"

"District 9"

"The Hurt Locker"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"Star Trek

BEST COMEDY

"(500) Days Of Summer"

"The Hangover"

"It’s Complicated"

"The Proposal"

"Zombieland"

BEST PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

"Gifted Hands"

"Grey Gardens"

"Into The Storm"

"Taking Chance"

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

"Broken Embraces"

"Coco Before Chanel"

"Red Cliff"

"Sin Nombre"

"The White Ribbon"

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

"Anvil"

"Capitalism: A Love Story"

"The Cove"

"Food, Inc."

"Michael Jackson’s This Is It"

BEST SONG

"All Is Love" – Karen O, Nick Zinner – "Where The Wild Things Are"

"Almost There" – Randy Newman – "The Princess And The Frog"

"Cinema Italiano" – Maury Yeston – "Nine"

"(I Want To) Come Home" – Paul McCartney – "Everybody’s Fine"

"The Weary Kind" – T Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham – "Crazy Heart"

BEST SCORE

Michael Giacchino – "Up"

Marvin Hamlisch – "The Informant!"

Randy Newman – "The Princess and the Frog"

Karen O, Carter Burwell – "Where The Wild Things Are"

Hans Zimmer – "Sherlock Holmes"

'Hurt Locker,' 'Hangover,' 'Up in the Air' among AFI's top 10 of 2009 (Los Angeles Times)

It was a big day for “The Hurt Locker.” No sooner did the gripping drama revolving around bomb-diffusing soldiers in Iraq win best film of 2009 Sunday afternoon from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., the independent production was named one of the American Film Institute’s movies of the year.

The AFI Awards 2009 is an almanac that records the year’s “most outstanding achievements in film and television,” according to the organization. The AFI awards honor the creative ensembles in front of and behind the cameras.

Besides “The Hurt Locker,” AFI’s top films for 2009 are “Coraline,” “The Hangover,” “The Messenger,” “Precious,” “A Serious Man,” “A Single Man,” “Sugar,” “Up” and “Up in the Air.”

On the small-screen side, “The Big Bang Theory,” “Big Love,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Glee,” “Mad Men,” “Modern Family,” “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Party Down” and “True Blood” were chosen as the best of 2009.

The selections were made through a 13-person jury process involving scholars, film artists, critics and AFI trustees. Two juries — one for film and one for TV — met for two days of debate at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel. Among the film jurors were director Norman Jewison, Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (“Milk”), Leonard Maltin and Claudia Puig of USA Today.

Television jurors included writer-producer Neal Baer, Brian Lowry of Variety, writer-producer David Milch, actress CCH Pounder and John Shaffner, president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

AFI will honor the creative ensembles at an invitation-only luncheon at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles on Jan. 15.

"Up in the Air: mejor película para los críticos de Washington

The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) have announced the winners of their annual awards, the nominations for which were announced just yesterday. Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air,” which had led the nominations with eight mentions, including picture, director, actor, and two for supporting actress, led the winners as well. The film - which scored at the box office this weekend - won prizes for both best film and George Clooney’s lead performance. Other major winners included “Precious,” which won acting honors for Mo’Nique and Gabourey Sidibe, and “The Hurt Locker,” which won best director and best ensemble.

The full list of winners is below:

Best Film
“Up in the Air”

Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”

Best Actor
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”

Best Actress
Carey Mulligan, “An Education”

Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”

Best Supporting Actress
Mo’Nique, “Precious”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“Up in the Air”

Best Original Screenplay
“Inglourious Basterds”

Best Breakthrough Performance
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”

Best Ensemble
“The Hurt Locker”

Best Animated Film
“Up”

Best Foreign Film
“Sin Nombre”

Best Documentary
“Food, Inc.”

Best Art Direction
“Nine”

Show Them the Money (The New York Times)

By A. O. SCOTT

UP in the air you may meet Ryan Bingham, an ancient mariner of sorts who has, over the years (at least in Walter Kirn’s novel, where he originated) encountered just about everyone who has flown business class across the spokes and hubs of this great land. Ryan is capitalism with a handsome face: efficient, optimistic, confident without undue arrogance. He’s a winner, and he belongs to a winners’ club that anyone with sufficient grit or good fortune can join. You’ve met some of the other club members, and when you run into the new, gray-haired George Clooney version of Ryan in Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air” you may find yourself wondering: Does he know Jerry Maguire?

Remember Jerry Maguire? I don’t mean the memorable catchphrases — “You had me at hello,” “You complete me,” “Show me the money” — though there is something to be said for a movie about business that crystallizes its themes so effortlessly in aphorisms. I’m thinking of the man himself, perfectly embodied by Tom Cruise at a point in his career close enough to “Risky Business” and “Top Gun” that some of his bratty winner’s vigor was still intact, but far enough from Oprah’s couch that the energy was not yet off-putting. In 1996 Jerry was a person very much of his moment: post-Cold War, pre-9/11, mid-boom. He was also, for his moment, the incarnation of a venerable American ideal.

Not the mythical self-made man — surely Jerry had risen from the comfortable middle of the socioeconomic heap — but rather a man in the process of unmaking and remaking himself. In the course of Cameron Crowe’s movie, the professional, personal and romantic aspects of Jerry’s life are all dismantled and put back together again, sometimes by accident, sometimes by his agency, leaving him more or less where he started and yet at the same time completely transformed. He starts out in the grip of a vision, suddenly gifted with the ability to see everything wrong with his field (he’s an agent representing professional athletes) and able to put his insights into prose. The result is a manifesto, a mission statement that earns him the apparent admiration of his colleagues and costs him his job.

What makes “Jerry Maguire” so engrossing, so full of surprises even on repeat viewings, is the odd, syncopated rhythm of triumph and loss that animates Jerry’s story. He chooses to take his humiliation as vindication, and sets off to start his own company with a single client (Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Rod Tidwell) and a lone employee (Renée Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd), who in due course becomes his wife. And so, before the movie has reached its midway point, he has it all. But of course he has it all wrong. The outward trappings of fulfillment are not yet matched by his inner condition, and so he must undergo further realignment, to become a better friend, a better husband, a better agent and a better man.

A representative man. Jerry is a full-blooded avatar of the Protestant-Emersonian tradition that continues to flourish, often unrecognized, in American civic culture, and in our popular art as well. He believes, above all — and the movie all but insists — that it is possible for apparently discrepant values and identities to be perfectly congruent. Decency, wealth, love, fame: these are not contradictory but rather mutually reinforcing expressions of that secular grace known as happiness. We are innately entitled to pursue it, and a broad highway and a good car will only speed the capture.

If Jerry’s ambition seems for a while to undermine his ability to sustain his connections with his wife and best friend, that is not because of any inherently destabilizing imbalance between love and work. It is because he has not yet learned to harmonize those things.

The way he learns is through adversity, a habit that makes him a walking illustration not only of management-philosophy boilerplate, but also of the doctrine of the fortunate fall, whereby sin is understood as beneficial because it makes redemption possible. “Jerry Maguire” is a success story made up of episodes of failure. It works like a charm, and partakes of a very old magic. Surely Jerry is, in his way, a descendant of George Bailey from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” who has to fail and falter so many times on his way to a Christmas apotheosis. Love and work, civic duty, family responsibility and selfish ambition have to pull him apart in every direction before he can pull himself together into the person he was always meant to be: solid citizen and husband, doting father and prosperous businessman. George’s repeated losses make that triumph sweeter and, in the durable logic of this kind of fairy tale, all the more real.

Turning setbacks into opportunities is part of the gospel that Ryan Bingham preaches too, but here it is more snake oil than healing elixir. This is partly a difference in vocation: Jerry’s job is to advance the careers of others; Ryan’s is to end them. He is a soft-voiced angel of professional death, employed by a consulting firm that companies hire to do the dirty work of downsizing.

In this he is, as much as Jerry Maguire or George Bailey, a man of his time. George’s version of capitalism was rooted in place and community, prudent investment and steady growth. Jerry’s end-of-the-century American dream is predicated on expansion, like bread dough (or, as the case may be, a soap bubble), and on a happy principle of reciprocal benefit. The better Rod plays, the richer Jerry can make him, which in turn makes Jerry more successful, and thus free to focus his energies on the nonmaterial things that really matter. But Ryan, in the movie version of “Up in the Air,” lives in a land of subtraction and brutal zero-sum accounting. The worse things are for his clients — his victims, really — the better they are for him and his bosses.

In Mr. Kirn’s novel this economy is somewhat abstract, and the layoffs Ryan perpetrates are more signs of a complicated reshuffling of the business world than symptoms of potential collapse. That is because the literary Ryan Bingham is, more or less, a contemporary of Jerry Maguire. (George Clooney, by the way, is just a year older than Tom Cruise.) Published in 2001, “Up in the Air” is a late, half-comic expression of the anxieties of the boom years, its fine satirical observations tending toward (and finally upended by) a helter-skelter conclusion that Mr. Reitman has wisely jettisoned. But the novel’s shortcomings are in their own way premonitory. The book, like Jonathan Franzen’s “Corrections,” published the same year, forces itself to an overblown conclusion because the logic of narrative, and perhaps also of history, seemed to demand a calamity.

The movie “Up in the Air,” floating in the same ether of departure lounges and airport hotels as the book — familiar territory for Jerry Maguire, though back then there was no Wi-Fi or Department of Homeland Security — suggests that we still don’t know what hit us. The film’s most subtle and radical effect is the way it takes up its themes of alienation and self-estrangement in a familiar, almost comforting way and then destroys that sense of comfort.

The story of Ryan Bingham, we assume, will be the tale of a man who discovers the flaws in his happiness and sets out to correct them, so that he can become a better version of the person he already is. We know, before he does, that his freedom is laced with loneliness, and that he will discover, beneath his restlessness, an urge to settle down. There will be some turbulence, but when the gravitational pull of forces of family and commitment assert themselves, surely an easy landing is in store.

In the meantime Ryan’s essential gravity reveals itself through his relationship, at once rivalrous and tutelary, with a younger colleague who represents a scary new way of doing business. This character, wonderfully played by Anna Kendrick, is also someone we might recognize. She is a version of the callow hotshot played by Topher Grace in Chris and Paul Weitz’s lovely and underrated “In Good Company,” and, as such, a fixture in movies about American business. The kid comes in full of shiny new ideas that the old-timer (Dennis Quaid in “Company”) scoffs at partly because he’s threatened, and the kid views the old ways as so much sentimental folklore. By the end each has learned something, and the lifeblood of capitalism is renewed with minimal bloodshed.

“Up in the Air” does not entirely give up on that story, or on the ideal of perfect happiness represented by “Jerry Maguire.” But the title betrays a hint of disquiet that, by the end, has grown into something more. Not an intimation of catastrophe, exactly, but a tremor that is more troubling for being less dramatic. When Ryan dispenses his cold comfort to the people he lays off — telling them that, if they stick to the project of self-making and look for silver linings in the clouds, everything will work out — he half-believes his own patter, as any good salesman would. So do we, even if we know better.

Watching him, you can’t help but believe Ryan will win in the end, that the singular happiness he has postponed and pursued his whole life will catch up with him in the end. Surely, if anyone can have it all, it’s this guy. Come on, he’s George Clooney!

But what if he can’t? If nothing — or no one — will complete him? And what about the rest of us, stuck on the ground or braced for a hard landing? Remember that song from “Jerry Maguire?” It was called “Free Falling.”

"Up in the Air", de Jason Reitman (The New York Times)

By MANOHLA DARGIS

For most people there’s no joy in sucking down recycled oxygen while hurtling above the clouds. The free drinks and freshly baked cookies in business might be nice. (I wouldn’t know.) For most of us, though, air travel largely invokes the indignities of the stockyard, complete with the crowding and pushing, the endlessly long lines, hovering handlers, carefully timed feedings, a faint communal reek and underlying whiff of peril. The skies rarely seem friendly anymore, but to Ryan Bingham, the corporate assassin played by George Clooney in the laugh-infused stealth tragedy “Up in the Air,” they’re so welcoming, he might as well be home.

And so he is. Like many high-altitude border crossers who sometimes seem alone in keeping the airlines aloft, those business types with the corrugated brows, juggling BlackBerrys and double-shot lattes, Bingham lives in between here and there, home and away. The difference is, he loves interstitial living, finds comfort and more in all the spaces associated with airports and airplanes or in what Walter Kirn, in his novel that inspired the film, calls Airworld. “To know me is to fly with me,” Bingham says in the film, like an airborne Descartes. It’s as if as a child he had heard — and heeded — the call of the female attendants for National Airlines who, in the gilded flying age, used to purr, “Fly Me.” Back when flying meant soaring.

That was then, this is now, and this is here, meaning the crash-and-burn-baby-burn America in which one man’s economic crisis is another’s golden opportunity. This is our moment, enthuses Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman, pitch perfect), the unctuous pragmatist for whom Bingham works if rarely sees in person. Some men hunt heads, others — like Bingham — lop them off. A “career transition” counselor, he crisscrosses the country firing employees whose bosses won’t pull the plug themselves. Racking up scalps and miles might seem like a tough way to make a living. Yet it suits Bingham, a solo act for whom no hotel room is too depressing or crowd too lonely, which makes him ripe for the dramatic picking.

The young director Jason Reitman initially takes a hard-sell approach to Bingham, putting the character — and of course Mr. Clooney — front, center and under flattering light, as if he were selling a luxury car or diamond watch, which in some ways he is. In fighting trim, Mr. Clooney looks suitably sleek, even when dressed in the generic business clothes he’s soon packing into a suitcase, a task that’s captured in a series of precisely framed, rapid shots. Expressive of both efficiency and a routinized existence, this sequence is itself an economic narrative device (one Mr. Reitman repeats). But it also comes across as glib, a shortcut to character, making it hard to know if it’s Bingham who’s the slick one here or Mr. Reitman.

The answer is both, though Mr. Reitman is working harder than it first appears and more than he did in either “Juno” or “Thank You for Smoking,” his only other features. The son of a funnyman (his father, the producer-director Ivan Reitman, helped bankroll this movie), the younger Mr. Reitman seems to have been weaned on screwball comedies — he likes women and teasing patter — and classic Hollywood is in his blood. “Up in the Air” is an assertively, and unapologetically, tidy package, from its use of romance to instill some drama into the narrative (the book introduces disease instead) and the mope-rock tunes that Mr. Reitman needlessly overuses. When you have Mr. Clooney and Vera Farmiga on camera, you don’t need some professional emoticon mewling away on the soundtrack.

Ms. Farmiga enters the picture, legs and intelligence flashing, just around the time you think that nothing much is going to happen with Bingham. (A crash? a terrorist strike?) As Alex, a fast-moving businesswoman, Ms. Farmiga bats around the double-entendres effortlessly and brings out real warmth and palpable vulnerability in her co-star. To watch them together — particularly during their later scenes, when they visit Bingham’s hometown — is to realize just how much alone time Mr. Clooney clocks in his movies. It says something about the dearth of strong female stars in American cinema that he hasn’t been this well matched with a woman since Jennifer Lopez in the 1998 caper film “Out of Sight.” (In the years since, Brad Pitt has been playing Rosalind Russell to Mr. Clooney’s Cary Grant in the “Ocean’s” movies.)

One of the pleasures of “Up in the Air” is that its actresses — including Anna Kendrick, who plays Bingham’s colleague Natalie — share the frame with Mr. Clooney as equals, not props. The ferocious Ms. Kendrick, her ponytail swinging like an ax, grabs every scene she’s in, which works for her go-getter (go-get-him) character, who is sent out on the road with Bingham as part of an efficiency campaign. She’s a monster for our times: a presumed human-resources expert who, having come of age in front of a computer, has no grasp of the human. By contrast Bingham, who fires people face to face with a small smile and pat speech, comes across as the good guy, though only if you forget what he does for a living.

Mr. Reitman successfully exploits the seeming disconnect between his star (whom we can’t help but like) and the character he plays (whom we want to like, simply because he’s played by Mr. Clooney), so much so that it takes some time for you to notice the approaching darkness. Mr. Reitman certainly hints at the trouble to come: however bright Mr. Clooney’s smile, there is something terribly off about Bingham’s blithe attitude both toward his own existential reality and his profession. Instructively, it is how Mr. Reitman circles around the character, showing how Bingham’s actions affect not just him, but also those around him — including the people he fires — that deepen the movie if not its peripatetic center.

There are different ways into “Up in the Air,” which can be viewed as a well-timed snapshot of an economically flailing America, appreciated as a study in terminal narcissism or dismissed as a sentimental testament to traditional coupling. A wedding subplot, for one, involving Bingham’s sisters (Melanie Lynskey and Amy Morton), which brings him closer to Alex, threatens to swamp the story in sentimentality. Yet to put too much stock in this detour (which also involves Danny McBride) is to flatten a film bristling with contradictions. Certainly you can fall for Bingham, maybe even shed a tear for him, though don’t get carried away (as he does) or mistake him for some kind of hero. The truer tragedy here, as the repeated images of fired men and women suggest, doesn’t belong to him.

“Up in the Air” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Adult language and partial female nudity if not (alas) male.

UP IN THE AIR

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Jason Reitman; written by Mr. Reitman and Sheldon Turner, based on the novel by Walter Kirn; director of photography, Eric Steelberg; edited by Dana E. Glauberman; music by Rolfe Kent; production designer, Steve Saklad; produced by Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, Daniel Dubiecki and Jeffrey Clifford; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes.

WITH: George Clooney (Ryan Bingham), Vera Farmiga (Alex Goran), Anna Kendrick (Natalie Keener), Danny McBride (Jim Miller), Jason Bateman (Craig Gregory), Melanie Lynskey (Julie Bingham), Amy Morton (Kara Bingham), Sam Elliott (Maynard Finch), J. K. Simmons (Bob), Zach Galifianakis (Steve) and Chris Lowell (Kevin).