There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

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?

aint seen it

did Streep win something last year? I have no memory of it.

Scott's lookit-George-Clooney-in-boat shoes graf was his jump the shark moment.

this is Streep's second win in 3 years, but the 3 she had before that were '79-88.

I don't know what boat shoes look like, and I understand Clooney was barefoot for much of the film. (The kind of details I miss regularly.)

Albert Brooks takes Best Table Manners

oh c'mon, Morbs.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TWBHF24WL._SL500_SX190_CR0,0,190,246_.jpg

some of us are landlubbers

now I hafta see fucking Drive

so far the winners are classic NYFC picks.

beloved Iron Lady, crusty but benign much-loved actor for supporting, crusty but benign director of documentary winner.

what nonclassic picks would you expect?

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

i thought there was a lot of tell, a lot of bluster. the intro jeremy irons gets before we meet him - he's sharper than you, quicker than you, will blow up like that - kinda running counter to the guy we actually got, the kinda thinness that pervaded the rest of the thing. i see why it was important to have those guys & that story put up on screen but it felt perfunctory to me.

take shelter was intense, sure. just a little clunky to me, too direct, and then sorta freewheeling at the end

meryl woulda nailed the lady fwiw

wonder with what manner of death Armond is threatening Clooney and Dujardin voters.

Wonder if he stumped for Sandler for best actress.

if he was still chair he could have Sandler MC the dinner

xp!

OK, I am done complaining about how uninteresting Brad Pitt is in Moneyball.

(I say that because I suspect I won't be actually doing the Oscar articles on THND this year.)

at least TOL got mentioned.

In this case, tho, it was smuggled in.

Byron couldn't have said it more graciously.

Killer to killer.

You're too short for that gesture.

p sure Pitt in ToL is best American male perf I've seen this year. They got one right!

I believe they are pushing him as Supporting for Oscars, hoping he will get 2 nominations.

yeah Pitt is really really great in TOL, v. evocative of my own ex-Navy dad.

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.