There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

Why? Because I hate that the 2006 thread is lost to the sandbox.

Tintin is funny, so you will hate it?

No, but odds are I will find War Horse funnier.

both figure to be funnier than Crazy Stupid Mush.

btw there is a big hunk of a Tintin book Crab with the Golden Claws shoehorned into this one, so you nerd-purists can start bitching.

Didn't laugh more than once or twice during CSL that I can remember, but that didn't diminish the things I liked about it.

it was aiming to be something besides funny? that is, aside from its horrific reinforcement of heteronormative monogamy?

I don't hate heterosexuals as much as you do, I guess.

Either that, or I missed all those scenes where characters said how awesome it was that they were married and straight and everyone should try it sometime.

Plenty of worse reinforcements of heteronormative monogamy, starting with the new Clooney film that Morbz likes.

I gleaned the themes by why ppl are smiling in the last scene, EH. (And c'mon, I generally hate gays much more, myself included. And Sl4nt's pan was written by a het along those lines.)

I did not "like" Descendants very much, goddamn you, I said it was "not bad."

...btw Stuart Klawans raved in The Nation about the Marxian themes of the new Timberlake thriller. Obv Soto should go!

Your self-pity doesn't absolve you, Morbs.

then I will have to say 50 Acts of Contrition.

(but making a dirty-sitcom Parenthood is nuch the greater sin)

True. Parenthood was perfect (and occasionally dirty) as it was.

tsk

in some ways Tintin reminded me of the good elements of 1941

My favorite scene: a nude Keanu Reeves fondling Dianne Wiest.

Or is that another Parenthood?

.btw Stuart Klawans raved in The Nation about the Marxian themes of the new Timberlake thriller. Obv Soto should go!

I have Cuban blood and am hence immunized against that menace. Marxism too.

against Timbo?

http://moviecitynews.com/2011/11/20w2o-special-new-york-first-film-critics-circle-get-tattooed/

For Immediate Release, please:

New York Film Critics Circle
to Announce Awards via Twitter Tomorrow

November 28, 2011 -- The New York Film Critics Circle will be announcing their awards during their annual vote via twitter, please follow the handle @NYFCC2011. The vote will take place at 9:30am EST tomorrow, Tuesday, November 29th, at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center. The awards will be handed out at a ceremony on Monday, January 9, 2012.

Says chairman John Anderson, “We were looking forward to voting on Monday, November 28th, but due to conflicting schedules, we have made the decision to move back a day to ensure all of our voters have the opportunity to see all of the eligible films.”

Not actually all that perturbed that they're going to miss Steven Daldry's newest because of this.

Tree of Life and Beginners deemed equally great.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/11/gotham-film-awards-best-movie.html

Saw War Horse this morning. Kinda loathed it.

Were you expecting not to?

I try not to expect anything! Which helped make Hugo a nice surprise.

I'll take that as a sign that I may like War Horse.

I was going to post this on the *J. Edgar* thread last week, but I'll put it here. David Thomson's review perfectly captures my own feelings about how dreary Eastwood's film is:

http://www.tnr.com/article/film/97434/j-edgar-eastwood-decaprio-fbi-drag

And he makes note of something I was thinking about too, why Stone's *Nixon* is the much better film: "Oliver Stone’s *Nixon* has many faults, but it is charged with unbridled psychotic energy such as was needed here."

ha, have fun spotting / guessing the (ill-conceived) Basterds reference in War Horse, Morbs.

I won't, but I'm guessing it could be a reference to something ripped off by Tarantella.

S & S sneak peek:

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/in-contention/posts/tree-of-life-easily-tops-sight-sounds-best-of-2011-poll

Oh, and this is going on now: https://twitter.com/#!/NYFCC2011

Margin Call won for best first feature.

I am looking fwd to House of Pleasures, which just opened here:

http://www.artforum.com/film/id=29607

wrong Herzog film for Best Doc

(But I'd put at least 3 others ahead of either WH. It helps to be a brand.)

Yeah, pretty tepid pick.

@ArmondWhite is enjoying the moment.

NYFC awards announced today, no?

too early to follow the thread, eh?

Too old to follow Twitter.

i caught margin call & take shelter recently & didn't really like either (the latter was intermittently affecting but sorta frustratingly linear, & overscored to shit, for me), having sorta expected to on account of the way they've been talked about since coming out (like almost as a 'wave'). does anyone here rep for them?

also thought shannon's performance in TS was even MORE remarkable & transformative if you thought he was actually joshua jackson

& yeah into the abyss creams COFD

I kind of liked J. Edgar. I guess it would have been more melodramatic if he was more of an evil madman and less of a consummate bureaucrat, but I'm not sure if it would have been more historically accurate. It seems like a lot of the criticism of the film is that it's too evenhanded. People wanted a movie that would expose the rotten heart at the core of the American state security apparatus, but they got something which kind of justifies the existence of such apparatus. I guess I went into the movie with low expectations, but it kept my interest up for 2+ hours, and I didn't feel like my intelligence was being insulted.

I thought Margin Call was okay, but kind of overrated.

I guess I don't consider Margin Call overrated cuz the critics I read didn't think much of it.

35 mins since last tweet (Sarris bathroom joke here)

Take Shelter is an intense experience thx largely to Shannon, but I didn't care for all the Nightmare on Elm St frissons, and esp the ending(s) (the storm shelter AND the beach).

Jessica Chastain wins the Tracy Flick award for most involvement.

Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain for Tree of Life, The Help and Take Shelter

OK, I had no idea she was in The Help! Woulda picked Redgrave maybe, for Coriolanus -- which Chastain is also in! -- if not Jeannie Berlin or Edie Falco.

Apparently it's now a yearly tradition for the NYFCC to give Meryl Streep an award.

Margin Call is a decent film overrated by Gleiberman-Ebert types who miss English-language "adult films."

Freudian!

NYFCC2011 NYFCC2011
Correction: for "The Iron Lady"
57 seconds ago

NYFCC2011 NYFCC2011
Best Actress: Meryl Streep for "The Lady"

I guess I don't consider Margin Call overrated cuz the critics I read didn't think much of it.

I was mainly thinking of the A.O. Scott review. I mean I thought it was a crisply efficient thriller, and it struck the right mood - the mixture of cynicism, fear, and greed seemed authentic - but the plot was a bit thin overall, and was there any point to the sick dog other than to make us sympathize with the head trader?

alfred and ryan: it is really a lot better when you look at the horse as nothing more than a tool. spielberg actually makes very few attempts to make you care about it as a 'character'; it really just serves as an unwitting tour guide through devastation-of-war vignettes. dissimilar to au hasard balthazar in that way imo.

I'm irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen. PETA sucks too.

The trick to making an asshole interesting is make him seem calm and rational

Didn't see any assholes in this film.

we saw it for jew christmas, and my mom who is a decades-long veg/animal rights freak (who would possibly disown me if she ever learned i eat meat) was seriously traumatized for at least an hour afterward. she said "i didn't care about the fucking horse, it was everything else." a movie about WW1 shouldn't seek to inspire anything less than that sentiment.

I'm irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen

YES, this. I keep saying this to people and they think it's strange.

im not sure they're mutually exclusive. besides, though i haven't seen this, the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it's like a stand in human, who can feel pain and fear and not have any larger understanding as to why. it's certainly a perfect representation of what happened to people in world war 1.

Excepting that I bet most people knew "why."

sure, though there are varying levels of "why" i guess. anyway, i'll shut up until i see it.

the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it's like a stand in human

yes -- but it didn't work here.

Still better than pretty much everything else that's gonna get a BP nod.

not convinced that it will or that The Tree of Life won't.

just watched My Snooze with Marilyn. Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

hey Branagh, yer way more lumpyfaced than Olivier.

Branaugh was the only thing that got me through that movie. Aside from the gofer's pillowy lips.

AMPAS likes war movies (e.g. the only Malick movie to get a BP nod so far).

wd pay to see Branagh-as-Larry gay movie, but who wd play Danny Kaye?

Larry the Cable Guy

Branagh was awful.

Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

Bless them!

The Prince and the Showgirl is as tin-eared as this thing, at least.

I guess there will be a wave of I-spooned-with-a-legend-during-a-forgettable-movie-shoot memoirs now.

are you trying to cast the Michelle Williams-Heath Ledger biopic now?

The Artist was cute

like a dead kitten.

naw it was kinda charming, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a much more engaging champion for the cause of vocal chords.

TTSS is not the best movie to watch with a buzz. I don't know what the hell just happened in that one.

Let's hope Trollhunter is more my speed.

got my hands on UK horror-thriller Kill List; a little too familiar in some ways (the climax splits the difference between a couple of genre touchstones), but damn if that last 20 minutes didn't give me heart palpitations.

― Simon H., Thursday, 29 December 2011 04:01 (2 days ago) Bookmark

Cannot understand the praise this is getting. I thought it completely incoherent. Obviously everything wasn't meant to spelled out but the various twists and tonal shifts just didn't add up to anything, and for all the shocking content i never once felt scared or engaged beyond a sort of mild curiosity as to how (and why) this thing got made.

i loved TTSS despite being lost myself (especially in the last 10 minutes or so) but when i read the wikipedia description of the plot it all seemed pretty straightforward. this leads me to think that part of the brilliance of the movie is that it's able to so strongly suggest that something else is happening other than the explicit plot. im not exactly putting that right, but there's definitely a sense that there's some hidden depth to it.

anyway, i really liked it a lot. reminded me of Zodiac in that it's a kind of 70s style movie with little to no action that feels very lived in. i cant wait to watch it again.

My feeling regarding TTSS is that Alfredson gives you roughly the minimum visual information needed to piece together the plot specifics, but not much more. I appreciate that very much,

re: Kill List; it basically winds up as a 21st. cent. Wicker Man rehash, but that's still one more idea than most movies of its ilk, and I found the climax well-rendered.

TTSS felt like it was throwing information (exposition, maybe) at you early on, but it all came together really clearly for me. I love that the moment at the end with Strong and Firth had a lot of heft to it because of seeing a polaroid earlier.

Heh, Shame in stark contrast to TTSS in that nothing is left unclear at all. What a rotten movie. One and a half pretty great performances totally wasted.

And bear in mind, I hate sex a whole lot.

A Separation was pretty tremendous. I guess that disqualifies it from winning the Oscar then.

And now I've just realized that it was Ebert's #1 movie of the year, so it'll probably be roundly despised around here.

More ire will and should be directed at his #2.

I was planning to see it tomorrow, though I'm not looking forward to it.

fuck this TTSS, and Alfredson come to think of it. He's been both outremade and pulled off a superfluous rehash.

some people seem to think A Separation is the first really good Iranian film ever (ie, troglodyte blogger Jeff Wells).

yeah, i'm happy enough to see it as a safe, memorable, efficient & worthy #1 for this year, to see it praised, &c; but it doesn't actually stand out for me as a new or unusual film, against the backdrop of other social iranian drama - i think to some degree i'm reminded of panahi just bc it's iran, the urban scenes, &c, but it's v much in that tradition i think, getting under the surface of things in this roaming, weary loop. it is an excellent film & so masterfully woven & paced - like i think someone mentioned hitchcock - but so are a bunch of things, going back ten years

Its probably my favourite foreign nu-release since 4 weeks, 3 months... and a really great melodrama (they don't come round often so treasure them).

Wd be weird for anyone to say its the first great Iranian film since there's one or two of them knocking about every year; and then there are guys like Kiarostami around.

i sorta assume it's people assuming it's the first great iranian film from a position of ignorance, i can't imagine anyone repping for it over the canon. i think about 4 months sometimes, i guess i will get back around to catching some of the new czech/related stuff this year - aurora, if it ever opens, & once upon a time in antolia - but it did seem like a really balanced wave. 4 months got the aesthetics of depicting a place without veering into pure appealing optics totally right - a v beautiful looking film but very restrained, in the right register.

I prefer all the Panahi I've seen to A Separation. By a fair amount.

I think its one of the best Iranian films I've seen, then again I can't say I've seen more than 20. What would the canon be? xp = interesting, love to see more by him.

Austin Film Critics Association:

Best Film:
Hugo
Best Director:
Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive
Best Actor:
Michael Shannon, Take Shelter
Best Actress:
Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Best Supporting Actor:
Albert Brooks, Drive
Best Supporting Actress:
Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter
Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Drive, Hossein Amini
Best Cinematography:
The Tree of Life, Emmanuel Lubezki
Best Original Score:
Attack the Block, Steven Price
Best Foreign Language Film:
I Saw the Devil, South Korea [dir: Jee-woon Kim]
Best Documentary:
Senna [dir: Asif Kapadia]
Best Animated Feature:
Rango [dir: Gore Verbinski]
Robert R. "Bobby" McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award:
Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter/The Tree of Life/The Help/The Debt/Coriolanus/Texas Killing Fields
Best First Film:
Attack the Block [dir: Joe Cornish]
Austin Film Award:
Take Shelter [dir: Jeff Nichols]

Top 10 Films:
1. Hugo
2. Drive
3. Take Shelter
4. Midnight in Paris
5. Attack the Block
6. The Artist
7. Martha Marcy May Marlene
8. I Saw the Devil
9. 13 Assassins
10. Melancholia

Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

ugh that top ten.

at least #8-10 can be defended

picking Rango over Tintin = trying too hard

A couple dozen folks give their best moments of '11:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/moments-of-2011-part-1-20111230

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/moments-of-2011-part-2-20111230

I would co-endorse The Trip DVD as having the best deleted scenes of the year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGqj3WbHDvA&feature=player_embedded

You should watch the tv version. Three hours worth

I believe all the footage excised for the theater version is on the DVD extras.

I watched Weekend: was disappointed by the poignant ending and a couple of the conversational riffs but otherwise a terrific film, precise in depicting the ways in which gays feel most uncomfortable when our straight friends are being most accommodating, and photographing these men in their flats in twilight.