We continue the run-up to Oscar, Oscar, Oscar! Remember that my tired, exhausted, probably embittered self will be Twittering the AMC Theaters Best Picture Showcase this Saturday, and that I will be joined on Sunday night by a couple of Super-Magical Guests to chat about the Oscar ceremony As! It! Happens! So stay tuned.

My favorite movie of 2008 was Rachel Getting Married. There, I said it. I've gone back and forth between it and some others, but it's the one I keep coming back to, and it's the one I was most disheartened and baffled to see shut out of most of the major awards categories, with the exception of Anne Hathaway's (well-deserved) Best Actress nomination.

The "good sister"/"bad sister" movie has been done quite a bit, where one is a free spirit who gets away with murder, and the other is a dutiful rock who feels overshadowed and resentful. It's been done with a lighter heart in In Her Shoes, with great sadness in Georgia, and even with total froth in 27 Dresses. This is a very, very old story.

But the fact that it employs a storytelling staple in an interesting way is a great example of its best quality, which is the deft deployment of a beautifully broad range of talents. The credits include people who come from pop culture and high culture; from television and theater and music; people who are young and hot and people who are making comebacks. Creatively, it is a powerful endorsement of the idea that you often make great projects by opening your mind a little.

Why Anne Hathaway is a brave choice, and where the poppiest of pop-culture phenomena enters the mix, after the jump...

 

Hathaway is the most obvious example. While she got good notices for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, before this movie, she was still best known for The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. In fact, in Prada, the critical consensus seemed to be that she was a lightweight. Little in her high-profile history suggested she would do well playing Kym, an anguished drug addict.

Look at Bill Irwin, who is quietly heartbreaking as Kym's father. He's done episodic television — he's been in a couple of the Law & Order incarnations, and that's heavy drama. But he also comes from Sesame Street, where he played the second Mr. Noodle, and from Broadway and elsewhere, where he's performed (and been revered) as an actual clown. Not a clown like Adam Sandler is a clown; a clown. (You might have seen this appearance on The Cosby Show many years ago.)

Kym's mother is played by Debra Winger, whose career had been in retreat, before this, for at least fifteen years. She talked to The New York Times about considering retirement all the way back in 1994. In fact, the way many people felt about Mickey Rourke's comeback in The Wrestler is how I felt about Debra Winger's comeback in Rachel. She's just devastating: perfect and believable and very, very hard to watch. Kym's stepmother? Anna Deavere Smith, who's a Pulitzer-Prize-nominated playwright, a Tony-nominated performer, and — oh, yes — the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a genius grant.

More? Rachel's fiancé is played by Tunde Adebimpe, of the very popular band TV On The Radio, whose gorgeous and natural voice is used to great effect. One of the wedding guests — who sings very briefly — is played by Tamyra Gray, a finalist in the first season of