COSMONAUT review

COSMONAUT (Cosmonauta) (2009)
**1/2/****
starring Claudio Pandolfi, Sergio Rubini, Mariana Raschilla, Pietro Del Giudice
screenplay by Susanna Nicchiarelli, Teresa Ciabatti
directed by Susanna Nicchiarelli

Susanna Nicchiarelli's Cosmonaut (Cosmonauta) opens with little Luciana fleeing Holy Communion, shedding the accoutrements of the ceremony on her sprint back home. She seems a little young to be throwing off the shackles of religious conformity, younger even than her alleged onscreen age of nine, but the punchline's priceless in its precociousness: "Because I'm a communist!" she barks when her mother asks why she left church. There's actually a bit more to her rebellion than that. With their dad gone (having died a "true communist"), she looks to her geeky older brother Arturo for guidance, and because it's 1957 and the Soviets are about to launch Sputnik, he favours the godless world of communism as well. From a North American perspective, the movie is interesting in that respect, as very rarely do our history books stop to consider the excitement that Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin must have engendered in Europe on their way to depicting America's mad rush to win the space race. Even propaganda footage showcasing the likes of Laika the Russian dog--which forms the basis of transitional montages similar to but less operatically intense than the ones that constitute a good portion of Marco Bellocchio's Vincere--was mostly new to me. In fact, when the moon-landing cropped up in the finale, I breathed a sigh of disappointment, though it's worth noting that it may not be such a cliché in Italy.

Arturo is diagnosed with epilepsy. Cosmonaut flashes forward to 1963, the year Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman--moreover, the first civilian--in space: Luciana's now a surly, chain-smoking fifteen-year-old (she doesn't appear to inhale, which may have been actress Mariana Raschilla's own squeamishness but suits a character who's all affectations just the same), a heavily-medicated Arturo is a social liability to her, and their mother has remarried, mainly for stability's sake. Following in her late father's footsteps, Luciana joins the Italian Federation of Young Communists, implicitly out of childhood nostalgia. While Arturo mysteriously hoards match-heads, headstrong Luciana establishes herself as a promising addition to the party, but her efforts are clearly designed to attract the attention of her handsome branch leader, who, somewhat hypocritically, has his eye on the seemingly better-heeled Fiorella. Luciana's actions then become strictly jealous and petty; proving the wisdom of a voting age, her raging hormones trump her allegiance to any political cause.

The movie has its charms, including an enticing, Almodóvarian palette and an intriguing juxtaposition of Cold War iconography and old-world architecture. Raschilla's humourless, almost joyless performance is decidedly disengaging, though, and I lost patience with Cosmonaut as it became an increasingly pro forma coming-of-age flick. Nearly every beat in the film's second half, down to Luciana's cruel rejection of Arturo's advice and Arturo subsequently running away from home without the identification he needs in the event of a seizure, finds its origins in genre convention rather than in organic storytelling. (Although Nicchiarelli elicits sympathy for Arturo by showing others marginalizing him, she ultimately marginalizes him as well (a Catch-22?), making his theatrically self-destructive gesture feel arbitrary.) And what to make of the picture's historical irony? Luciana and Arturo cling to doomed concepts (socialism, rocket ships), allegorizing the youthful ignorance of us all, yet the smartest, most humane characters are arguably a pair of middle-aged Communists, one of whom is played by Nicchiarelli herself. I haven't seen Nicchiarelli's companion piece, Sputnik 5, an animated short about the veritable Noah's Ark that was the titular satellite, but without all that narrative baggage perhaps it has a chance to fulfill Cosmonaut's aesthetic promise.

Cosmonaut begins a one-week engagement at The Royal in Toronto on March 18. Visit the filmswelike website for more details.

The SUPER 8 trailer is here!

So let's rejoice...by watching the just-released trailer for The Smurfs!

I watched "The Smurfs" religiously until they phased out Gargamel by introducing Johann and Peewee, and the show gave way to all sorts of inscrutable Belgian horseshit.

UPDATE: I don't actually want to see this movie, just to clarify.

Unfinished

I'm Lucy operating the conveyor belt when it comes to keeping up with my review queue; here's a taste of my numerous false starts over the past few months, if for no other reason than to shame myself into finishing the two or three pieces I'm currently juggling.

SMALL WONDER
I was 10 when "Small Wonder" debuted, and I seem to recall it as being the first TV series I approached with anything resembling cynicism. For starters, actually landing on it while channel-surfing was a bit of a crapshoot. The vagaries of syndication not meaning much to me then, I interpreted this as corporate embarrassment in the program which transferred over to me, even with my undiscriminating latchkey palette. For another thing, "Small Wonder" marked the first time I noticed special effects as such: done by Disney, according to creator Howard Leeds, they generated more laughs for their transparency than for any sight gag they were aiming to execute--which, along with the dependably lame jokes, gave the show a certain ironic lustre. I seem to recall most often encountering "Small Wonder" at the tail end of Saturday-morning cartoons, and it was only my extraordinarily passive viewing habits--combined with a frankly bottomless appetite for sitcoms--that kept me from changing the channel. A few more things I remember about my childhood experience with the show: that I loved the theme song, or at least that it took up permanent residence in my brain almost immediately; and that Tiffany Brissette, in the title role, was one of the few child actresses I didn't have a crush on, for reasons that ultimately had less to do with her looks than with the uncanniness of her performance. More on this later.

THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE
Oddly enough, the worst scene in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the one that apes the titular segment from Fantasia/2000. It's a non sequitur, for starters, its shoehorned-in feeling aggravated by a weird edit that plays like a skip in the record. For another thing, there is nothing charming about an enchanted mop in live-action. On this we might blame the Swiffer commercials, in which anthropomorphized custodial implements are sent to the gulag because the lady of the house has decided to "give cleaning a whole new meaning." (The sequence relies on the same sort of crude puppetry and self-demystifying close-ups--all your mind sees is a grip standing just outside of camera range.) And Jay Baruchel is no Mickey Mouse, so it's a long time before we even realize that this is supposed to be that.

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is not a direct translation of the original Korean title of this first instalment in Park Chanwook's "Vengeance Trilogy" (and the only one he didn't have a hand in writing--although it was clearly a huge influence on his own writing style), but it describes the film much better than the generic Vengeance is Mine would have. Revenge here is not biblically cathartic but rather the sort of dysfunction we aim to minimize with a cute title, because in fact we never want to experience it. Late in the picture, two good but misguided men stand in a river; one tells the other that he's sorry but he has to kill him, and we don't necessarily agree, but we're, yes, sympathetic to the impulse.

from an abortive attempt at expanding my BACK TO THE FUTURE review
I guess I never really realized, seeing as how I saw it before I would've seen anything that influenced it, Back to the Future's playful conversation with the cinema. It's not a pastiche, but it references a gamut ranging from James Whale's Frankenstein ("It works!!!" is this movie's version of the similarly lightning-soaked "It's alive!!!") to, with Doc Brown's climactic dangle from Hill Valley's clock tower, Harold Lloyd/Safety Last!. As the background use of 1954's Cattle Queen of Montana to signify Ronald Reagan's silver-screen past is a little bit anachronistic, one could argue that they may as well have picked the more familiar Bedtime for Bonzo from 1951, but the esoteric choice suggests more respect for the audience's intellect--not to mention Reagan. And the DeLorean's introduction struck me as especially funny this time: a truck opens up to lower a ramp like E.T.'s spaceship, and, as Alan Silvestri's score bespeaks wonder and the camera rises with reverence, billowing clouds of CO2 mist part to reveal a futuristic automobile retrofitted for time travel. Then Doc Brown stumbles out of the car...having a mild coughing fit from all the smoke. Talk about taking the piss out of Spielbergian awe--something which audiences would've especially appreciated in July of '85, if you take into account that the re-release of E.T. earlier in the summer was met with picket signs that read, "E.T. Go Home!" (At least it was in my hometown, where E.T. had barely ended its official run before this revival.)

Read anything good offsite lately, even only tangentially film-related? I really enjoyed this VANITY FAIR article on the wartime experiences of J.D. Salinger.

Annual Professional Commentary on the Oscar Nominations

Best Motion Picture of the Year
127 Hours (2010): Christian Colson, Danny Boyle, John Smithson = oy
Black Swan (2010): Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, Scott Franklin = yay, pretty much
The Fighter (2010): David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Mark Wahlberg = barf
Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas = obligatory
The Kids Are All Right (2010): Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Celine Rattray = sorry, no
The King's Speech (2010): Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin = Miramax nostalgia
The Social Network (2010): Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, Ceán Chaffin = and the winner is
Toy Story 3 (2010): Darla K. Anderson = yay, pretty much
True Grit (2010): Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin = yay
Winter's Bone (2010): Anne Rosellini, Alix Madigan = barf

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Javier Bardem for Biutiful (2010) = Julia paid 'em
Jeff Bridges for True Grit (2010) = yay
Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network (2010) = sure
Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010) = whatevs
James Franco for 127 Hours (2010) = at Gosling's expense

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right (2010) = best thing about it
Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole (2010) = barf
Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone (2010) = yawn
Natalie Portman for Black Swan (2010) = yay
Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine (2010) = yay

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale for The Fighter (2010) = the full retard
John Hawkes for Winter's Bone (2010) = best thing about it
Jeremy Renner for The Town (2010) = interesting
Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right (2010) = shrug
Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech (2010) = shrug

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams for The Fighter (2010) = her perennial nomination; also: yum
Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech (2010) = shrug
Melissa Leo for The Fighter (2010) = oh please
Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (2010) = emoticons to express yay because she's 14
Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom (2010) = yay

Best Achievement in Directing
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (2010) = won't win
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen for True Grit (2010) = awesome
David Fincher for The Social Network (2010) = deserved this fifteen years ago
Tom Hooper for The King's Speech (2010) = whatevs
David O. Russell for The Fighter (2010) = aw hail no

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Another Year (2010): Mike Leigh = throw the dog a bone
The Fighter (2010): Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington = no no way n'uh uh no way fuggetit
Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan = oh please
The Kids Are All Right (2010): Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg = see Inception
The King's Speech (2010): David Seidler = he wrote Tucker

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
127 Hours (2010): Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy = Slumdog ass-covering
The Social Network (2010): Aaron Sorkin = rent that tux
Toy Story 3 (2010): Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich = ok
True Grit (2010): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen = yay
Winter's Bone (2010): Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini = barf

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders = ok
The Illusionist (2010): Sylvain Chomet = love-children everywhere are checking their attics
Toy Story 3 (2010): Lee Unkrich = believe it or not

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
Biutiful (2010): Alejandro González Iñárritu(Mexico) = or Julia would've killed everyone
Dogtooth (2009): Giorgos Lanthimos(Greece) = yay
In a Better World (2010): Susanne Bier(Denmark) = didn't see, but Bier should be in movie jail
Incendies (2010): Denis Villeneuve(Canada) = go Leafs
Outside the Law (2010): Rachid Bouchareb(Algeria) = news to me

Best Achievement in Cinematography
Black Swan (2010): Matthew Libatique = yay
Inception (2010): Wally Pfister = best thing about it
The King's Speech (2010): Danny Cohen = rock me, Danny Cohen
The Social Network (2010): Jeff Cronenweth = runs in the family
True Grit (2010): Roger Deakins = Susan Lucci

Best Achievement in Editing
127 Hours (2010): Jon Harris = hope he thanks Cuisinart
Black Swan (2010): Andrew Weisblum = yay
The Fighter (2010): Pamela Martin = whatchutalkinabout?
The King's Speech (2010): Tariq Anwar = shrug
The Social Network (2010): Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall = whatevs

Best Achievement in Art Direction
Alice in Wonderland (2010): Robert Stromberg, Karen O'Hara = barf
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010): Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan = yay
Inception (2010): Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias, Douglas A. Mowat = A for effort
The King's Speech (2010): Eve Stewart, Judy Farr = shock of shocks
True Grit (2010): Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh = yay

Best Achievement in Costume Design
Alice in Wonderland (2010): Colleen Atwood = first mostly-CG costume nom?
I Am Love (2009): Antonella Cannarozzi = shrug
The King's Speech (2010): Jenny Beavan = "
The Tempest (2010/II): Sandy Powell = didn't see, but it's Julie Taymor
True Grit (2010): Mary Zophres = yay

Best Achievement in Makeup
Barney's Version (2010): Adrien Morot = Giamatti hasn't looked so human since Planet of the Apes
The Way Back (2010): Edouard F. Henriques, Greg Funk, Yolanda Toussieng = ironic
The Wolfman (2010): Rick Baker, Dave Elsey = yay

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
127 Hours (2010): A.R. Rahman = yawn
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): John Powell = ok
Inception (2010): Hans Zimmer = ok
The King's Speech (2010): Alexandre Desplat = I like Desplat
The Social Network (2010): Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross = rooting for it

Gonna stop there because we start getting into categories with too many blind spots for me personally. No surprises or even big huge disappointments this year, except maybe the lack of love for Marwencol.

Top Ten Talkback

Here's your chance. What'd we miss? What'd we get right? What were we smokin'? And what was the deal with all that cunnilingus? (Full lists with intro here.)

Ian's list:

10. Iron Man 2

9. Somewhere

8. Marwencol

7. Mother

6. The Other Guys

5. Valhalla Rising

4. I'm Still Here

3. Greenberg

2. Black Swan

1. True Grit

Bill's list:

10. The American

9. Black Swan

8. Blue Valentine

7. Exit Through the Gift Shop

6. Somewhere

5. Dogtooth

4. Greenberg

3. Marwencol

2. Life During Wartime

1. True Grit

Walter's list:

10. The American

9. Marwencol

8. Dogtooth

7. Greenberg

6. Mother

5. Animal Kingdom

4. Black Swan

3. Somewhere

2. True Grit

1. Valhalla Rising

I'll start: I'm completely unwilling to acknowledge that Iron Man 2 is anything but a turbid, often-unwatchable mess that may lend itself by its very vapidity to some read or another, but doesn't present much beyond just the fact of itself. So be it - I don't know that I've been immune to that instinct in the past (like Blue Crush, for instance) - he without sin, and all that. I lament not having seen Todd Solondz's latest as I really, and for truly, love Todd Solondz's stuff (well, except for Storytelling) - and wish I'd seen Soderbergh's latest on Spalding Gray because, as Bill has eloquently put it about things in the past, I feel like I've dreamed it already.

I want to echo Bill's Twittered pride about not any of the three of us sticking Social Network in the top ten though, yeah, I think we all liked it. It's just, you know, so blandly intelligent and well-crafted... sort of like The Ghost Writer though I fear that I don't see any connection to it and Chinatown. The Ghost Writer doesn't end with resignation... ah well. I do wonder about the venom, though, of my colleagues against Scott Pilgrim which, though it didn't touch my heart in any discernible way, I was sort of impressed by in a technical way. It was my Tron 2, I guess, and I was sort of excited by Wright's joking dedication to making a sequel to Krull in the Twitter-verse. Maybe I'm just a sap.

And what is it with all the cunnilingus?

I think it's interesting that I was the only of these three male critics to rank Somewhere above Greenberg... though when it came time to do the top flick, well, it couldn't be more masculine.

I noticed, too, that there were a lot of people jumping off things in movies this year; that Resnais' Wild Grass is actually sort of a twee piece of shit; and that even though I still don't think that Shutter Island is great, I'm coming around to the idea that it's not as elderly as first suspected. Here's the thing, it's been a long time since a year in pictures has boasted as many beautiful-looking films, independent of their ultimate value. Stuff like Ondine, for instance, by the always-reliable Neil Jordan, which is mostly cross-eyed badger spit and missed opportunities, but in moments flabbergastingly lovely. Like Inception, which sucks, but is a wonder to look at - even the documentaries - even the foreign flicks... I'm excited to catch up with what I missed this year; I'm thinking 2010 was a deep well.

Real Life, Real Nudity, and the Breast Actress

What follows is a type of confession. By that, I'm not saying that this is the sort of thing in which I admit that Ben Affleck is actually pretty good in Surviving Christmas. No, this is the sort of thing in which I admit that I'm not a very good person and don't particularly care.

There were two events that led me to post this. One was the brief mention of "real nudity"--the sort of nudity mentioned by Bill in which you see a featured actress' parts, and not a nameless, often faceless, stripper's. Real nudity is the sort of thing that intimately involves you in the life of a famous actress--irrevocable and invasive, it has very little to do with sex and quite a lot to do with the destruction of privacy. Also, it's awesome in every way and a few I'll never be able to articulate.

The other event is Bryant Frazer's piece on Fantasia--a leisurely and fair dissection of one of my favorite films. "Of course," you might think, "the Pastoral Symphony section is too goofy for words." What can I say? "If it accomplishes nothing else, it does seem pretty fucking 'pastoral?'" Anyhow, my band-aid having been fully removed, it's time to go for broke and tell my little story.

So I'm having a conversation about the greatest films of this era with a girl--a friend--who has just turned 21. My assignment, and hers as well, is to pick the major Academy Award categories (Picture, Director, Screenplay, and the four Acting categories), but for her lifetime instead of any particular year. I add on a pick for Foreign Film, not because pretentiousness gives me little cerebral erections, but because she came up with one first. And I try to avoid repeating films wherever possible. So here are my choices (I don't entirely remember hers, but they are non-terrible and non-interesting):

Best Picture 1989-Now: Pulp Fiction
Best Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Best Director: Joel & Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Actress: Emily Watson, Breaking the Waves
Best Supporting Actor: Samuel Jackson, Pulp Fiction
Best Supporting Actress: Lara Belmont, The War Zone
Best Foreign Film: Hero (I actually prefer Hable con ella, but she's already an Almodovar fan, and they're so close in my mind, I went with something I didn't think she had seen.)

So my list, if you know me, isn't particularly surprising. I feel no responsibility to mention less common films just to seem worldly, so I find the lack of anything idiosyncratic strangely idiosyncratic. My friend told me her list, listened to mine, and nothing of any particular value was discussed. Then I started thinking about my list.

It's not particularly interesting except for the fact that both of my best actresses play sexual victims. Lara Belmont is raped by her dad and sets her own breast on fire in front of her brother and still somehow comes out in better shape than my best actress, who basically allows her disabled husband to talk her into getting fucked to death by strangers. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty great in There Will Be Blood, but he doesn't have to take a bowling pin in the butt. No doubt Day-Lewis, the consummate professional, would set his nuts on fire if the role depended on it--one thinks about the tears jerked from a hypothetical filming of My Left Ball--but the fact is that the sexual degradation of dudes isn't interesting. Not from a plot perspective, and not from a "real nudity" perspective.

Naked tits have value, even in this Google and external hard drive culture. Readily available, not to mention the most infantile valuable object ever conceived, a previously unavailable naked boob is very possibly one of the last true currencies. This isn't the sort of thing I'd write on resumes, and it isn't exactly uncommon, but I know if it's possible to see a famous girl's boobs. Which famous girl? Pretty much all of them. Is this a creepy sexual thing? Well, it's creepy, but it's not sexual.

I don't want to fuck Zooey Deschanel. I mean, sure I'd marry her, but that's not the point right now. First of all, putting aside all issues of taste and decency (and feminism), wanting to fuck her would be impolite; I don't know her. Also, she's a vegan and it's difficult (though not impossible) to make fun of someone cooler than you while you're fucking them. So to recap, if you walked up to me with a faceless picture of Zooey Deschanel's vagina, I'd decline on the grounds that I have better reasons to hate myself. But.

If you told me that there was in existence a completely authentic picture of Zooey Deschanel's face and naked boobs, I would fetishize that picture in the completely insane (and mostly asexual) way that people fetishize new photos of the Titanic under water. I mean, it's HER face and HER boobs.

You can never undo that.

Human interaction has come a long way. People can look, hopefully, at another person's picture on a dating site, and instead of thinking, "Is the possibility of having sex with this person worth getting stabbed in the throat with the smallest and least impressive member of a terrifying collection of mail-order ceramic pastel unicorns?" they think, "Well, at least he claims to love his mom." There's something kind of great about the optimism with which we face relationships these days. But it's total bullshit--more people than ever before know that most every aspect of polite society is the overcorrection we publicize to make up for how damaged and deranged we are all the time.

So I'll come right out and say it. When the film theory types talk about the voyeurism inherent in female screen nudity, they're on the wrong track. A voyeur has a goal, a point of view. That's not what happens when a girl is naked on screen. It's not about looking; it's about showing. Female nudity, real nudity, is truth--not the manufactured, italicized truth that shaky-cam and other verite techniques claim to be, and certainly not a documentary either. No, real nudity is better--more and less pure, it's theater and fiction and the girl you always wanted to see naked and a real person whose nudity can never be revoked. If you're the kind of person who'd rather see guys naked, then I apologize, but there simply isn't an analogue. A dick can be theater and fiction and desire, but no one ever thinks that to show your dick is to give away a piece of yourself. I hesitate to say that boobs--either literal boobs on display or literal boobs slightly hidden or metaphorical boobs commenting on the female experience or metaphorical boobs commenting on the nature of being an actress (metaboobs?)--are necessary aspects of any quality female performance, but my hesitation is based on shame and not analysis.

When it comes to my choice of best actresses, I'm more than willing to call myself a misogynistic pervert and call it a day. But the fact is that women will never play Day-Lewis' part in There Will Be Blood or Jackson's part in Pulp Fiction. Oh sure, the scales will balance and all that jazz, but there have been only a handful of men asked to carry a movie like Day-Lewis carries There Will Be Blood. To expect a role like that for a woman is simply childish.

But if our expectations of real nudity and film as a whole are a distilled and amplified concoction of theater, fiction, desire, and truth, maybe those women are the best actresses after all. How do you compete with a man who methodically rapes the country and beats a man to death? If you've seen Breaking the Waves, perhaps the analogy isn't far off.

UPDATED w/ANSWERS + WINNER: "Somewhere" Giveaway

Want to win a Somewhere prize-pack featuring a $25 movie theatre gift card, a copy of Lost in Translation on DVD, and, best of all, a Somewhere poster autographed by writer-director Sofia Coppola? Of course you do. To qualify, all you have to do is submit your answers to the quiz below along with your name and address to by Wednesday, December 22, 2010--the day Somewhere opens in select cities across the U.S.. (Speaking of which, this giveaway is limited to residents of continental North America.)

Alas, we only have one of these to hand out, and the winner will be drawn at random from among the correct entries.

A COPPOLA FAMILY QUIZ

1. How many Lisbon sisters are there in The Virgin Suicides? FIVE
2. Which actress did Sofia Coppola replace in The Godfather Part III? WINONA RYDER
3. What was the name of the magazine Francis Ford Coppola started in the 1970s?
CITY (though whether he started it or hijacked it is I guess open to debate)
4. Which of the following actors is NOT a member of Sofia Coppola's family: Nicolas Cage, Alicia Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, or Talia Shire?
ALICIA COPPOLA
5. How many Oscars do Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola have between them?
6 (five for Francis, one for Sofia)
6. What did Sofia Coppola use as a stage name in the 1980s?
DOMINO
7. Which of her father's films did Sofia Coppola co-write with him?
"LIFE WITHOUT ZOE," from New York Stories
8. Six degrees of separation: connect Stephen Dorff to Sofia Coppola pretending that Somewhere doesn't exist.
I loved reading this answer. Most of you used Stephen Dorff in World Trade Center to Nicolas Cage (Sofia's cousin as well as her Peggy Sue Got Married co-star). My personal answer to this was Stephen Dorff to Giovanni Ribisi (in Public Enemies), narrator of Sofia's The Virgin Suicides.
9. What is the pseudonym Anna Faris's character uses to check in with in Lost in Translation?
EVELYN WAUGH. (Everyone got this--I thought it'd be harder since it's not part of the film's Wikipedia entry.)
10. Sofia Coppola played a resident of what planet in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace?
NABOO

Congratulations DANIEL NUNEZ of WORCESTER, MA. Your prize-pack is on the way. Daniel, for what it's worth, had the most esoteric answer to #8: Stephen Dorff to Stan Tracy (!) in I Shot Andy Warhol. (Veteran extra Tracy earlier drifted through Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club.)
My thanks to Focus Features for sponsoring this contest. In the meantime, carry on as you have been--intrigued to see something of a backlash forming against cult darling Scott Pilgrim. Lots of good stuff coming up, by the by, including our own Top 10 lists for the year. Any guesses?