1. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Period. When we called our shot for Brad Pitt as the likely winner in a crowded Best Actor field, we hadn't yet seen Hoffman as Caden Cotard, a Schenectady, N.Y., regional theater director at odds with his painter wife Adele (Catherine Keener) and his own chronically afflicted body. When Adele and his young daughter leave him for new, famous lives in Berlin, Caden spends the next 30 years funneling a Macarthur "genius" grant into staging his masterpiece: A city within a city, populated by himself, his doppelganger (Tom Noonan), his doppelganger's doppelganger and those of the people closest to him. Yet nobody and nothing is as close to Caden as his own admitted psychosis, the layers of which collapse onto and into each other in scene after scene.

Sounds great, right? Except, well, it is. Portraying a man vexed by doctors, lovers, work and ultimately himself (aging decades in the process), Hoffman digs into an adventure of suffering as ludicrous as it is bittersweet. In one crucial scene when the hunt for his estranged daughter takes him to Berlin, what little interaction they have both validates and fetishizes his paranoia — just one of dozens of metaphysical stunts that make Hoffman's performance thrilling and really kind of inspiring. He not only gets but owns all this mindbending melancholy, and for the maybe first time ever, we felt like we had a guide in our tumble down the Kaufman rabbit hole.

2. Six extraordinary roles for women. Starting with Samantha Morton as Caden's theater receptionist-turned-lover-turned-right-hand Hazel (and then Emily Watson as the woman who depicts her in his play), Synecdoche features enough dynamic parts for actresses to fill its own Oscar category. Michelle Williams and Dianne Wiest contribute brilliant turns as Caden's second wife and fourth doppelganger, respectively, but Hope Davis walks away with her scenes as arguably the world's worst couples therapist:

3. Charlie Kaufman gets to be Charlie Kaufman. Like director and former collaborator Michel Gondry, whose screenwriting debut Science of Sleep found a grandly ambitious balance of theory and technique that slipped through the twee seams of their Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman and his vision seem more potent and personal on their own. (Don't get us started about his overrated work with Spike Jonze.) It's another nifty trick under the circumstances; as Manohla Dargis alludes to in her fantastic NYT review, an opus about failure is itself a staggering creative success that took decidedly less than a lifetime to make. And for better or worse, it can happen to you. Maybe not the part about bedding Michelle Williams, but that never ends well anyway.

4. Hazel lives in a house on fire. Why? Kaufman professes not to know, but it makes already great scenes (and a classic, climactic bit of dark humor) altogether memorable.

5. Adele Lack's paintings. The square-inch canvases on display through the weekend at the Montalban Gallery are too absurdly small to require the paint-spattered basement workshop where Keener's character composes them, but we think their clues to Caden's past, present and future symbolize the rewards viewers earn for accepting an artist's challenge. Sound familiar? Like so much of the rest of Synecdoche, New York, it really is your life. We'd sincerely hate to see you miss it.

i didnt go to the "VMAS" as we used to call them but theyve gotten so fucking Urban i dont know i guess Van Toffler thought ( hes an exec at MTV ) he was being edgy and he WAS by letting my darkling prince Brand host the mtv awards- but theyre not the "VMAS" and they never will be again - i had ZERO desire to watch let alone go and thats one of my very favourite people ive ever known or had the honour of being friends and fiends with hosting it so i feel horribly rude that my desire not to watch assholes with chastity rings- oh for fucks sake ive had some great conversations but not ONE has ever ended in an Orgasm, y'all need some pussy and some cock and shut the hell up-

..but fuck it, its irrelevant, i am DAMMIT CELEBRATORY- i love when a friend does well and Russell appears to have done quite well- ist not exactltya fucking rock fest at mtv its...... "date my mom" remember- and it will never revert back to reliably rock n roll- its just the economiclevel of thier decision marketing wise to "grow with thier audience"" aka save mass money on shows by just predating on peoples insane desire and frenzy to be on insanely dysfunction al reality shows for free.

Translation: Courtney Love has some quibbles with MTV (just like us!), though they're nothing that couldn't be fixed by a night at the downtown Standard, two of the three Jonases, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, and a vial of ground rhino tusk. Should such a thing ever come to pass, we exhort you, MTV: play that video.

[Photo Credit: X17]

• How was Russell? [Myspace]

You probably feel like a fool. Ohhh, poor you! How do you think fucking Ron Burkle feels about that $55 million?? Ron Burkle, a man whose name is not exactly synonymous with "integrity"! Ron Burkle, a man who spent a few hundred grand trying to sabotage the career of a fucking gossip columnist who pissed him off.

That's why I entreat you to read the indictment, Anne. Sure, some painful memories will come flooding back: the custom-made suits from Milan. The "flowers, cosmetics, clothes, wine, expensive dinners, dog walking services and orthodontist expenses." The $30,000 housecall. The Caribbean vacation in 2006. The two-story apartment in Rockefeller Center that Raffaello rented for visiting members of the clergy. The notable absence in said apartment of any visiting members of the clergy!

A wise woman once said: "A woman especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." Wait, does that ring a bell?? Yeah, genius it was the tagline for Becoming Jane. The thing is, it doesn't apply to women who have no actual knowledge to conceal. And I'm not trying to get you to pull an Ophelia here but did the Feds even bother trying to question you? Did you ever get deposed? Let me tell you Anne, I would love love looooove to live in a world that allowed me to believe you waited until last week to dump him because you were recording his phone conversations, "backing up" his hard drives, strategically digging through his wastebaskets and mastering his rhetorical tics in preparation for your directorial debut, an epic black comedy on the striking guilelessness of powerful, influential, successful, and thoroughly rotten people when they believe themselves to be possibly in the presence of Christ Himself. At turns subtle and madcap, stark and decadent, it could serve as a scathing cinematic indictment of …well shit, you name it: organized religion, the human condition, Money, Power, the Vatican, vanity, "Love," your idiot self, even your ex-boyfriend.

But I somehow doubt it! Which is why right now, I hate to break it to you, he may be the one going to prison, but he is also kind of "winning."

Rafaello Follieri: The Indictment [WSJ]
Earlier: Vaticonned! How Anne Hathaway's Boyfriend Got Clinton To Underwrite Their Fabulous Romance

On the front was a dreamy pastel store-bought image of a small blonde girl, a spray of pink flowers and a dove...On the back was a crude pen and ink drawing of a male stick figure walking off the edge of an Acme razor blade into an open grave.

Though the years-old note had faded a bit, Thurman nervously recited the still-visible words attributed to the stick figure Jordan had drawn to represent her: "'Tee-hee." She continued with the spiral inscription, "'Chocolate, mouth, soft, kissing...' And then I saw this part: 'My hand should be on your body." Which was apparently when the alarm bells went off. And yet, the most disturbing part of the Times' report involves their borderline mean description of Uma's appearance: "haggard, pared-down...her golden hair was carelessly knotted...she wore no makeup and looked thin and hollow-eyed." How dare she! Apparently all celebrities should don designer duds and get their hair did a la J. Lo circa Diddy's gun scandal. We apologize to the Times on Thurman's behalf for not prepping red carpet-style for this "event."

• UMA THURMAN TELLS JURY OF MENACING NOTES FROM A FAN [NY Times]