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Anagrams of the nominees’ names from popbitch:

Richard Jenkins: Rancid Shin Jerk
Frank A Langella: Anal Flange Lark
Sean Justin Penn: Unspent In Jeans
William Bradley Pitt: A Liberal Dimply Twit
Philip Andre Mickey Rourke: Impure Kinky Hardcore Pile
Anne Hathaway: Wanna hat, yeah?
Angelina Jolie: I join anal glee
Melissa Leo: Measles Oil
Meryl Streep: Restyle perm
Kate Winslet: Silent Tweak

In that age-old contest, that heroic battle of champions to decide which country has the world’s premier internet cafés, none can truly compete with Japan and its facilities. In Nippon, the web-browsing establishments are composed of personal rooms, each furnished with a computer, a TV, and a reclining chair. Snacks are sold at the checkout counter, and no matter how shitty the place is, they always have a free-soft-drinks corner. That’s right—free soda! Some of them even have showers, and all of them have well-stocked manga libraries. Most are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so if you get sleepy while you’re doing your important internet stuff, you simply push back your reclining chair until it becomes a sort of a bed and then drift away. Before you know it, hey, that legendary Land-of-the-Rising-Sun sun is actually rising (although you won’t be seeing it from the dim confines of your drywall and plaster cave). But whatever, because you just had comfortable lodging in mega-expensive Japan for the bargain price of ¥1,000 to ¥1,500 ($10 to $15) a night. Look at that price and then reflect upon the rapidly growing number of Japanese people out of work and without a home, and you can likely guess the result: Japan’s newest breed of homeless.

Japan’s New Breed of Web-Savvy Homeless by Tomokazu Kosuga in Vice.

Hotel rates in Japan are atrocious. Now you know where to check in.

In the 24-hour internet cafe near Ernie’s old apartment in Makati, the women chatting with their cyber-dates casually take off their tops and present the goods to the camera at two in the morning.

What we really need is a 24-hour self-service laundry and cafe.

Based on the bestselling book spawned by an episode of Sex and the City, He’s Just Not That Into You is an instructional video that turns into an inspirational talk towards the end because hope is the big concept these days and you have to give it to the core audience. It proffers warnings against over-interpreting signals and rationalizing jerky behavior, then it suddenly turns around and says, “Maybe you’re the exception to the rule.” I speak from personal and empirical evidence when I say that in relationships, there’s a thin line between hope and dementia.

Nine individuals in varying friend and couple permutations act out different relationship issues. Ginnifer Goodwin is the girl whose romance desperation borders on psychosis—you want to root for her and you want to slap her. Drew Barrymore, the movie’s producer, has assigned herself a smaller (barely there) role. I don’t know how I got it into my head that Drew Barrymore directed this movie—she didn’t, but I suspect she’d be good at it.

Jennifer Aniston’s romantic history is known to 98% of the world’s population, and I’m thinking she should start playing hateful characters because right now her role in the movies is to give the audience someone good-looking, rich, famous, and with zero body fat to feel sorry for.

Scarlett Johansson is frequently cast as the predatory third party. So the audience won’t hate her because she’s beautiful, her character usually ends up alone (or dead) and searching for self-fulfillment or whatever. Woody Allen fans owe her for his late career revival.

Jennifer Connelly, eat something. Remember when she was voluptuous (Dark City, Mulholland Falls)? She’s still lovely, but she looks like she’s deprived of something, and it could be cheeseburgers.

Photo: Jennifer Connelly in Dark City.

Ben Affleck returns to acting after his stunning (as in, “Aiieee, he has talent!”) directorial debut. He was not sorely missed. Go direct another movie. Bradley Cooper’s tan is distracting. Affleck’s character, who lives on a boat, is not nearly as tan as Cooper, whose character stays indoors. Kevin Connolly from Entourage plays a real estate agent who cashes in on one of the great truths of our time: Gay people love real estate. Oddly enough the most attractive male in the cast is Justin Long, either because he has the funny lines or those Mac ads have gotten to me or my headache medication is causing weird side effects.

Irate critics have noted that the women in this movie are too good for the men they’re paired with. Critics, welcome to real life.

And complexity. And basic grammar.

The Millions diagrams the Obama sentence.

My view is also that nobody’s above the law, and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.

The Reader is supposed to be about the power of literature, but it only ends up demonstrating the futility of literature. The Nazi concentration camp guard spends twenty years in prison hearing and reading the great works of western literature, but she is not moved to look back on her own life and consider that she has been an instrument of evil. Literature has even abetted her denial by providing her with an easy means of escape. Or is Stephen Daldry’s film really saying, ‘You’re never too old to learn to read’?

Kate Winslet is the frontrunner for the Best Actress Oscar, and she’s the best thing about this confused movie, but all my friends fervently wish that Meryl Streep snatches the trophy (and that includes people who loved The Reader and people who loathed Mamma Mia). Sure, it’s Kate’s turn, and she has a splendid body of work (from Heavenly Creatures to Little Children), but it’s been a quarter-century since Sophie’s Choice and Meryl is so routinely brilliant we hardly even remark on it anymore.

True, Doubt was badly-directed: John Patrick Shanley, who adapted his own play, tried to make it more visual by using the weather to comment on the action. But it brought its arguments home. The Reader brings up the Holocaust only to use it as a complicating element for a love story. One might say that The Reader is Kate Winslet’s Sophie’s Choice: It’s about the Holocaust, she gets naked, and she uses an accent.

Telly Monster was not impressed. “Kung si Meryl yan, hindi lang accent, German ang dialogue! Magkaka-subtitles!” (If that were Meryl, she wouldn’t have been content with just an accent, she would’ve done the role in German.)

I don’t look for art at the movies; that’s the fastest way to run amuck. All I ask is that the movie either be good or awful, and if it turns out to be both (Temptation Island), so much the better.

Push meets my standard—it is ineptly-directed, idiotically-plotted, incomprehensible and often boring—but the director seems unaware of the unwritten rule of movies starring Chris Evans (or Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Cooper, James Marsden and other mid-level actors): he must take off the shirt. Alright, technically he’s shirtless in one scene, but all we see is a bunch of bruises.

Push belongs to the “If you have special powers, the government will hunt you down and weaponize you” genre (Firestarter, etc). It’s about a bunch of people with psychic powers—like the X-Men, only mental. The evil ones work for a secret government agency called The Division, and the others freelance. There are so many of them running around, you wonder if anyone is ordinary (Plus if everyone’s special, then no one is special).

According to Dakota Fanning’s character, there are several categories of special powers: the Movers like Chris Evans can move objects with their minds, the Shifters like Cliff Curtis can alter the appearance of objects, Sniffers can track a person by smelling their personal effects (potentially gross), Pushers can manipulate people by getting into their heads, and Watchers can see whatever you’re doing. Dakota’s character can see images of the future, which she draws with shiny pens on a journal with black pages. Unfortunately the future constantly changes, so her visions are unreliable. Dakota herself seems like an old person in a tiny body: she’s like Alia the Abomination in Dune.

The incomprehensible plot involves a Watcher who escapes from the Division and is chased by big scary Djimon Honsou to Hong Kong, where despite his telekinetic abilities Chris Evans is not making a good living playing dice. There are lots of chaotic chase scenes involving Chinese guys who can make your brain bleed by screaming. Chris and company can’t plan anything without the Watchers knowing, so he has a great idea. He writes down everyone’s tasks on slips of paper and puts them in sealed red envelopes that they can’t open until they get to their assignments. That way the Watchers can’t read their intentions. “But won’t the Watchers find out when Chris writes down their tasks?” Kermit points out. Doh!

Lots of movies opened today: Gran Torino, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, He’s Just Not That Into You, and Confessions of a Shopaholic. I decided to watch the one with the worst reviews first, so Shopaholic. The subject is already dated (pre-financial meltdown, title ending in -holic, etc) but I suppose it’s comforting to those who are on enforced retail rehab. It’s a Bruckheimer production, so you know it will have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the back of the head. Shopaholic is one of those chick-lit things (like Sex and the City) which propagate the notion that one can make a living writing a column. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Isla Fisher is an appealing lead—she’s cute (but not so cute that you’d want to shoot her), charmingly bonkers, and with a flair for physical comedy. Her editor is played by Hugh Dancy, who is so adorable that I googled him the minute the movie ended and discovered that he is engaged to Claire Danes. End of crush. (Does this mean Billy Crudup is free?)

Photo: Hugh Dancy

The movie is entirely predictable and occasionally incredible (she writes one article and becomes famous) but afterwards you don’t feel like you’ve been mugged, and I say this as one who would’ve bolted from the Sex and the City movie if my gay friend had not stepped on my shoelaces.