in the mood

Neither There Will Be Blood nor Michael Clayton, both nominees for best picture tonight, are green movies. But their themes - destructive greed and corporate corruption - catch the current mood of eco-anxiety.

As the oil prospector Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis represents the oil industry at its most rapacious. (We know where that's got us.)

As Michael Clayton, George Clooney works for a law firm defending agribusiness U-North in a long-running class action law suit. U-North may run very slick green ads, but the chemicals they've been producing cause cancer.

The firm's boss, played by Sydney Pollack (with Clooney above), sums up the law firm's ethos: 'The case reeked from Day One. Fifteen years in, I've got to tell you how we pay the rent?'

The movie, it seems, is only slightly exaggerated.