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Video by FFWD Staff The timely release of The Limey on DVD last week, presumably to coincide with the theatrical release of director Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich, also occurred at the same time that the annual Academy Awards hysteria swept out of Hollywood and through the lands via every mass cultural medium available. Yet, though it is undoubtedly one of the the most cinematically inventive American movies in years, The Limey hadn’t received a single Oscar nomination. Not even for its brilliant approach to non-linear narrative established with its bravura editing, clearly superior to all of the other films nominated in the editing categories, even The Matrix, the film that cleaned up on the technical end of things last Sunday night (alas, poor Keanu, there is not yet a category for best performance by a cyborg). Not to take away too much from The Matrix, but it would be naïve to think that the Academy has ever recognized art or innovation with its golden statuettes. Indeed, The Matrix is a sharply constructed film, however Soderbergh’s editing is so much more sophisticated as he tries to find new ways to release information to his audience, new ways to tell stories and shape characters, rather than functioning merely to keep the plot moving in a coherent fashion. It’s the incoherence of The Limey’s story that makes it so intriguing and watchable, over and over again. Still, The Limey has its critics, too, not least among them Lem Dobbs, who wrote the script for the movie and can be heard on the commentary track on the DVD release, bickering with Soderbergh about what Dobbs perceives to be the numerous failures of Soderbergh’s film. Dobbs comes off as a typically insufferable screenwriter, but the banter exchanged by he and Soderbergh is never less than hilarious and insightful, especially when Soderbergh trades in his good-natured self-satisfaction for a slightly more mean-spirited and aggressive approach. It’s not every day you get to hear a director call his screenwriter an "illiterate." Soderbergh’s willingness to allow Dobb’s invective to be voiced for as long as he does, or even at all, only shows he’s assured enough in his abilities and in the quality of his film to withstand the harshest criticisms an artist can suffer. Ultimately it’s clear Soderbergh is confident in his choices to eliminate much of the weighty backstory in Dobbs’s script, along with some peripheral characters who "just didn’t fit," and he doesn’t seem to care what the insufferable Dobbs thinks about his movie, as long as critics and audiences continue to respond to it as favourably as they have. Driving his point home with a sharp tongue and a deadpan delivery, Soderbergh’s is a devastating wit, and he always gives himself the last word. I wonder what kind words he has for the Academy?

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