There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

just as an indulgent aside, regarding that essay, i think i read it in fairly close proximity to catching kevin & felt it served in part as a weirdly apposite noose or lens through which to view/indict it:

How I long for documentary, in resistance - for unpowdered faces and unmeasured tread - for the emotionally undemonstrative family scene - for a struggle for unreachable words, for the open or even unhappy ending? The occasionally dropped shoe off the heel, the jiggle to readjust; the occasionally cracked egg; the mess of milk spilt. The concept of a loss for words. For a State of Cinema - as the state of grace that it affords us - in which nothing much happens but all things are possible, even inarticulacy, even failure, even mess...

how thunderingly linear & pointed & loaded & directional kevin was frustrated me & sorta limited the occasions on which one might have had some kind of emotional link w/the characters, to me. like even the scene in which the kid seemed to display some sort of momentary contrary-to-plot complicated response to TS was inevitably flipped to further contribute to its movement.

I don't care that the reason for the one-dimensional sledgehammer approach was that we were in Mom's head! I WANTED OUT.

Nonfans really beating Kevin with the MJ stick, as in Gleiberman's "Niranda July directs The Omen."

with that, Brody's #1 is The Future:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/12/richard-brody-the-best-in-film.html

Oy, now there's a movie I never want to see again.

I thought "it didn't make me want to kill everyone" was a thumbs-up!

No, clearly I like movies that advocate killing everyone.

Got a We Were There screener. Let's see if John Waters thinks maybe I should be dead.

jeez i just saw shame, i can't believe mcqueen made such a bad film! awful. it reminded me of home alone in its depth.,

the tagline should have been HEY IT'S THE NINETIES

I hope they used SWV in all the sex scenes.

sexy wintergreen vaseline?

Man, I am seeing a bunch of mediocrities that aren't coming close to my top 20. The Artist might be entertaining if you've never seen a silent film (IT'S NOT ONE, btw) or Vertigo.

god, 'the future' was so awful and pointless

Ides of March - kind of nothing
Sleeping Beauty - too obscure
Weekend - pretty amazing
Putty Hill - really liked it a lot more than I thought I would
Attack the Block - good fun!

oh yeah, and

The Future - fuck off with this shit

Pretty much on the same page with all 5 that I saw from those 6. (Unless you didn't mean the Catherine Breillat Sleeping Beauty.)

encouraged by this wave of hate for The Future

new Almodovar is minor and kinda fucked up

btw you can find a renegade ILXor in the S&S poll if you look closely.

and now I sit down to Contagion.

(Unless you didn't mean the Catherine Breillat Sleeping Beauty.

I meant the Julia Leigh one, though I guess my opinion of Breillat's would be about the same - maybe less so.

ugh I didn't like the Almodovar, and it seems like people are really overstating how fucked up it is. (this might be a by-product of covering a big genre-film fest every year.) Struck me as really plodding and weirdly boring considering the subject matter.

but then I didn't think too much of the last two either, so, as ever, ymmv.

i thought broken embraces was total trash but liked this one pretty well. because i was engrossed, maybe, & it felt like as good a delivery on his premise as we were promised.

I've never liked Banderas much when he has to kinda act.

geez Contagion was pretty good! cept for the parts that reminded me of Traffic's weak points, like some of what Jude Law was doing.

yeah I liked Contagion. I like that it was basically an elaborate reearch piece disguised as a blockbuster. also, y'know, Paltrow brain.

*research

Bleh -- the new Almodovar.

well, I'm done. For now.

Best thing I saw all day was the 30-minute climactic samurai battle in Miike's 13 Assassins, the busiest, bloodiest, muddiest ever. The rest of it is professional classicism.

The director's cut (2.5 hrs) of that was a fest highlight earlier this year.

Think I'm going to blow off the pile in favor of the first episode of Fanny & Alexander.

13 Assassins was good.

In my one poll I might vote for Brad Pitt and Michelle Williams... for other movies.

http://www.bostonfilmcritics.org/content/current-winners

a music award for The Artist! Cannibalizing Vertigo pays off.

bravura best actress pick from LA critics: Yun Jung-hee, Poetry

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2011/12/lafca_is_delibe.php

YES!

Poetry is at the moment my film of the year.

ugh on Christopher Plummer, who looks like a shoe-in for a nod now.

racist/xenophobic assholes predictably complaining

xp

The Artist is the ugh of the year; I'd even rather see Hugo win.

I'd rather see The Tree of Life win.

LAFCA have been great at championing lost causes in best actress the last few years.

Yolande Moreau, Séraphine
Kim Hye-ja, Mother
Yoon Jeong-hee, Poetry

Sorry, I meant to say they've been great at championing the best actresses in best actress the last few years.

same thing.

The Sl4nt list is a good one! Coming in a few days...

SF Critics a mix of yay (Certified Copy, Redgrave) dull (Oldman), and ugh (Swinton):

http://sffcc.org/main/

I think now that this weekend's done, we're definitely past the point where "open race" can be used anymore.

Think we reached this point a little later than last year, tho.

if you're assigning Oscar Inevitability to The Artist, well, this is not the Oscar thread.

OK, you can have this thread.

are we going to have to do Sandbox Oscars?

That I've seen better silent-film pastiches than The Artist on network variety shows.... it just.... a different nadir for the AAs.

we're definitely past the point where "open race" can be used anymore.

But all we know is who gets nominated, not who's a lock to win.

also, critics groups not as significant as industry guilds on such things.