There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

Naturally, it's a horror movie.

I found the new incarnation of Tinker Tailor a bore,

The original is too.

^nuts

I had forgotten all the gay/bi stuff in it, unless they left some of it out on TV in deference to Sir Alec.

had you read the book, eric? hated WNTTAK but can't quiet eliminate the possibility that it might not have been so heavy handed & ott had one not known where it was going, as i did

International Documentary Association gives best feature to Nostalgia for the Light (which I found visually ravishing but not as transcendent as others did):

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/ida-awards-and-more-documentary-news

Have you seen Incendies yet, Morbs? The plot calisthenics strained the credulity of the final twist, but the movie's quite good.

I have a library copy that will be watched sometime in the next 167 hours. EH, you're welcome to my spot on this next year.

I won't even be reviewing movies next year, god willing.

pish tosh i say

has anyone warmed up to these Russian art movies Silent Souls, My Joy, etc? They're morbid as hell and yet I still can't get into em.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, November 30, 2011 5:47 PM (5 days ago)

Silent Souls is competing with Midnight in Paris for worst of the year

i'm so sad i could knock over a tree with my bare hands

a woman is like a river to drown your sorrows in, excuse me while i have sex with this woman

shot of bird in cage

oh man, if i'd finished another earth, that would end up in the worst-of competition, too.

The Way is at the top of my "Jack and Jill, Zookeeper and the like don't even count" worst-of list.

Cahiers (the no-US-release Skolimowski), Edelstein (Ruiz, Spielberg x 2 and... Beginners!), more:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/daily-briefing-cahiers-du-cinemas-top-ten-of-2011

Lars von Trier has done a masterly job of evoking onscreen his nihilistic worldview. But how can you champion a film that is, in the end, so loathsomely anti-life-­affirming?

Someone hit this man with a dead squirrel.

lol yeah i saw
i can get behind most of bradshaw's, however; the appreciation for kevin mystifies me but even the almodovar i can get behind

cahiers gets point for cover design. will anyone else (here) rep for the new moretti? having trouble working up the enthusiasm to go see
xp
xp lol, melancholia was so vague

Just watched The Future on Amazon-on-demand. I was expecting more of a comedy. It starts out as an amiable quirk-fest a la Me and You and Everyone We Know, but ends in a much darker place.

Brit Indies -- Tyrannosaur, Fassbender, Ramsay, Redgrave:

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/michael-fassbender-and-vanessa-redgrave-win-at-british-independent-film-awards_1270200

btw Tyrannosaur ran one week (I think?) at one theater in NY, and I missed it; the last 4 days were 11a.m. shows only. British miserabilism not traveling well these days.

Not miserable enough?

distrib didn't realize NY is the Miserabilism Capital of the US.

really afraid of this one where Glenn Close looks like old Stan Laurel.

Trailer for that looked pretty hokey.

also saw the French fin de siecle brothel wallow House of Pleasures last night, which has something for everybody: a panther, appalling knife wounds, "Nights in White Satin."

sounds like Julia then.

no, i rather liked it.

everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear rend

Meanwhile Denby pisses off Scott Rubin.

just gonna use this for an all-purpose film thread for a sec; finally caught, it having been on the shelf for forever, maren ade's everyone else, which i remember hearing such good things about but never catching over the last couple of years of EOY lists. so good. & not really because it was appealing at all, i am a sucker for appealing, but just earned excellence. brutal. she made a student film as well that's apparently v interesting, also.

i can't quite get interested in denby-gate, sorta inside baseball to me

I don't care about it (DDenby, that is)

tonight I saw Pina, or Modern Dance Is Rubbish

3D sleepies

I'm more interested in Denby-gate than "everyone is all of the sudden interested in Margaret"-gate.

ppl were interested when/if it played in their city too.

And these were all, I'm sure, people who were huuuuuuge fans of You Can Count On Me, too. Right.

i loved the 'action' bits of pina, the talking heads not so much

is there a problem with people's interest being piqued by hearing about a film they might like? i don't know if anyone has to swear allegiance to YCCOM first (i found that film kinda limited by its trappings but ymmv). margaret is interesting, it's a film w/an unusually visible cast with zero distro if nothing else.

people got to see YCCOM is the point, and yeah, Margaret has two of the best American performances of the year by Paquin and Berlin.

Lonergan's ambition here is far greater here than in the other film, even if his reach exceeds grasp etc.

G Kenny on A Brighter Summer Day, Margaret and 'activist' criticism:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/12/a-brighter-summer-day-margaret-and-film-criticism-as-activism-andor-service-journalism.html

http://whatdoyouthinkmaxvonsydow.tumblr.com/

Again, I don't get it.

beyond to do with his mute role in Incredibly Hanks Unbearably Bullock?

I like this about the Yang film:

In 2006, when I was at Premiere, I put Jean-Pierre Melville's 1968-made Army of Shadows on my year's best list—at the TOP of my year's best list, in fact!—and I quoted Robert Christgau's review of Dylan/The Band's The Basement Tapes, which had been recorded in the latter '60s but not released officially until the mid-'70s: "We needn't bow our heads in shame because this is the best album of 1975. It would have been the best album of 1967 too." That went for Army at the time, I thought, and it goes maybe even double for Yang's film. Still. In 2006 Army of Shadows got a relatively high-profile arthouse rerelease courtesy of Rialto Films. It was highly publicized; an event more or less. A place on a critic's ten best list that motivated new viewers into seeking the film out would not necessarily led to something like a dead end.

I'd say the same about The Killer of Sheep.

I'm not crazy about doing it -- I live in NY so I can achieve cultural superiority by seeing ABSD and Killer of Sheep in the '90s -- but oh well.

Full S&S poll:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/films-of-2011-full.php

The part most people probably care/don't care about:

Incendies
Denis Villeneuve, Canada/France
A moving post-9/11 vision of our utter connectivity that simultaneously recalls Greek tragedy and the epic-intimate miracles of 70s American films.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rupert Wyatt, USA/Hungary/UK/Australia/Canada
A spirited re-think of the 1968 original captures the vengeful madness of our times – confirmation that movies can be pop and still be art.

Attack the Block
Joe Cornish, UK/France
A ghetto action flick yet amazingly prescient about London’s long hot summer and perfect antidote to what Morrissey called “the Royal Dredding”.

Paul
Greg Mottola, USA/UK/Japan
Nick Frost and Simon Pegg come to America and find more fun and depth than ever before in our pop culture/sci-fi heritage.

Film Socialisme
Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France
Visionary as ever, titled to note the passing of outmoded technology and philosophy.

Reflections:
You’d expect a major publishing boom about a film critic to be a heartening occasion. Think again: this year’s biography of Pauline Kael and a high-toned collection of her writing has, instead, revealed the sorry, fractious state of contemporary film commentary as critics bash her and her legacy. Yes, the Age of Movies has passed, as the title of Godard’s Film Socialisme slyly jests.
Kael’s way of taking movies personally as a part of a humanist tradition is no longer apparent in the current stumbling into nihilism that pervades the festival circuit and passes for contemporary film culture. Movies that sustain humane values are ignored for political fads and negativity. When Cannes crowned Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, it was apparent that aesthetics judgment is over, too. It’s more difficult than ever to defend a personal view of cinema, as Godard surely knows. That’s why Kael’s bio has a Once Upon a Time aspect.

Did anyone here like Incendies? cos I watched it last night and i thought it was kind of terrible? Like it was obviously really well made but in the service of a story so ridiculous and over-wrought that it actually made me angry.

ignore that second question mark

I saw it this weekend too and posted a mixed response.