In a brief review note in the current New Yorker magazine, veteran critic David Denby calls Sarah Silverman “the hippest comic working today.” I don’t have nearly enough of a relevant frame of reference to dispute or confirm this description, but there’s little doubt, on the evidence of Jesus is Magic (the movie Denby was responding to), that Silverman is trying to stake out a flagrantly violative performance territory. In one self-mocking but exhibitionist moment, she tells an audience “I’m sassy and brassy.” This, of course, is a parody of what she’s really doing.

Stephen Gaghan is best known as the writer of Traffic, Steven Soderbergh’s overstuffed argument that the “war on drugs” has been an expensive and counterproductive failure. That may not have been news to many people, but it impressed the Oscar folk enough to give Academy Awards to both Steves.