There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

interested, hoberman is my reliable personal opposite, ordinarily

though p reasonable in this case

VV's poll:

Best Actor: Michael Shannon
Best Actress: Anna Paquin
Supporting Actor: Albert Brooks
Supporting Actress: Jeannie Berlin

do i even bother watching melencholia at this point?

everyone seemed to love it?, like it seems as weirdly constant as anything, #3 in most polls or w/e. i thought it was p uninteresting

I think the final scene of Melancholia might be cued up on my TV for the New Years Eve countdown.

This is one of the reliably interesting elements of the VV poll:

The Passiondex™, is derived by multiplying a movie's average score by a percentage of those voters who marked it first or second or, because passion cuts two ways, declared it the year's worst movie. If the Passiondex™ is applied to the top 10 movies, Tree of Life drops to a temperate sixth place and A Separation to a reasonable 10th, with Melancholia (which garnered far more first- and second-place votes, as well as a nod for worst) the easy winner, followed by Mysteries of Lisbon, Certified Copy, Margaret, and Uncle Boonmee; if we open up the top 10 to the 20 highest vote-getters, Melancholia is displaced by The Artist (which boasts three worst votes), and Tree of Life falls to 10th as Hugo, Steve McQueen's sex-addiction drama Shame (#18), and Jean-Luc Godard's impenetrable Film Socialisme (#20) elbow their way into the top 10.

What happens when we open things up to the entire poll? The two Cannes laureates, Uncle Boonmee and Tree of Life, vanish — the latter actually outpointed by the Portuguese fado-drag opera To Die Like a Man (#27). Applying the Pash across the board yields a surprising result: Moving into first with every single one of its seven voters ranking it first or second to achieve an unprecedented perfect Passiondex™ ratio, the late Edward Yang's 1991 epic youth drama A Brighter Summer Day (#23), which had its first local theatrical run at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in November, wins!

In 2011's echo chamber of movies celebrating movies (The Artist, Hugo, My Week with Marilyn), only one of them fully functioned as a well-tooled thrill machine on its own terms, and that was Drive. You could pick out the '80s homage stuck between your teeth, or simply savor the perfect action."—Joshua Rothkopf

Patton Oswalt kicks no ass, in particular, in Young Adult. Instead, he plays a man that's absorbed a lot of abuse.

I'm surprised Viola Davis wasn't included in that Graph of Shame starring Fassbender and Chastain.

I am invigorated by Rothkopf's ballot (Time Out NY), who voted for Film Socialisme (my #1) as Worst. His best 3: Drive, Shame, We Need to Talk About Kevin. Rex Reed can retire, I have my new reverse barometer. Ha, xxp!

Sorry, Rothkopf is killing it.

Anyone notice yet that the whole #teammargaret campaign ends just like the movie itself: two people in a theater, hugging and crying? —Joshua Rothkopf

ok, he's captain of the philistines.

not strictly detritus, but I adore this para from Armond White's Dragon Tattoo review:

Trent Reznor’s score provides a new kind murder music, laughably indistinguishable from a floor-waxer or jet engine. Fincher’s team of high-priced, show-offy hacks are simply in the business of polishing and numbing Dragon Tattoo’s repugnant storyline even if it means incorporating such distractions as Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” or Enya’s “Orinocco Flow”–mash-ups worthy of Gaga. It’s all pointless enough to revoke Fincher’s Kubrick Fan Boy membership card.

Another overlooked gem that barely gained any recognition during its measly release, and only now seems to have developed a slow-building cult following: Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret. I stand by the assertion that this not-quite-completed work is the director's Magnificent Ambersons, a masterful sophomore effort held down by studio pressure that has kept the director's cut from seeing the light of day (yet). It's a fragmented experience mainly anchored by Anna Paquin's impressive turn as a scowling, confused young woman, but remains one of the most unnerving evocations of teen angst since Thirteen. — Eric Kohn

The opening credits of Dragon Tattoo are the movie's one bright (sic) spot.

xp not buying it

to be fair, Drive is not awful, just silly. If they'd had the sense to kill off Gosling as the genre tropes require, I might grudgingly point my thumb up at a 95-degree angle.

I was sposed to go to Dragon Tattoo screening last night, but was exhausted from drinking w/ m4tmos.

Have you seen Margaret, EH? If not can I FedEx my 'preemptive panner' rep to you?

Won't get here by Xmas, unfor.

And passing me that title on the basis of one single film is like that episode of Golden Girls when Dorothy hands Rose Blanche's slut crown on the basis of a single story.

Have you seen Margaret, EH? If not can I FedEx my 'preemptive panner' rep to you?

hi, Morbs!

I keep forgetting that Eric watches I'm Not There once a week now

so what do I have to do to get you to send me that screener

lol, I misread his post as an offer to send a screener too, A.

Which I was going to refuse with maximum prejudice.

You have to read more carefully or run Fox Searchlight! They didn't send any; I paid to see Margaret here in October.

xxp

Eric, are you still in the OMGSociety, and if so are we putting Pitt ToL performance in lead or supporting?

This might me my last year, so I'm debating whether or not to vote at all.

David Edelstein's half-and-half review of Tree probably approximates my own feelings.

I read Edelstein as basically saying that Tree of Life was great but would have been better if it was half an hour longer, which is kind of my view as well.

Emerson on the dinosaurs and ambiguity and Shame

It seems like lots of viewers try to attach some symbolic significance to the dinosaur encounter. I tend to see it as of-a-piece with the rest of the "birth of the cosmos" section - it's just another step in the formation of the planet - no more and no less significant than other steps in the process, such as the cooling of the earth's crust or the arrival of sea-based life. I certainly don't see it as the "birth of compassion" or something like that. We shouldn't try to get inside the dinosaur's head. If anything it dramatizes a point on the evolution of life on earth - showing a creature with relatively primitive forms of social organization.

Margaret reopens in NYC on Friday

http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=2348

Have to submit my top 10 today. This reminds me that I actually totally loathe listmaking.

Listmaking is easy; blurbing is hard.

tree of life isn't even beautiful, is the thing. no more so than yr average nature documentary, interspersed with cheesy cgi. how was the dinosaur scene any more meaningful than any given episode of walking with dinosaurs? so hokey.

i did wish margaret was longer! or, i could have seen how it could have been longer.

I've banished TOL from memory except for the Brad Pitt scenes.

there's not much to remember. it's not just hallmark card deep, it's hallmark card attractive too.

haha im surprised that you liked 'margaret' lex!

tree of life isn't even beautiful, is the thing. no more so than yr average nature documentary, interspersed with cheesy cgi. how was the dinosaur scene any more meaningful than any given episode of walking with dinosaurs? so hokey.

The "creation of the cosmos" section, coming right on the heels of the death of the son, the family's grief, and its questioning of its faith is pretty clearly based on the Book of Job and God's reply to Job in particular (a verse of which is shown onscreen at the beginning of the movie) so your reaction to this section may have something to do with how much the Book of Job resonates with you.

i posted something vaguely incoherent about why http://alexmacpherson.tumblr.com/post/14561553326/critically-divisive-films-that-last-about-15-hours-of

i tend to really like films which get human interaction right

xp

i think there are surely more resonant or meaningful ways to interrogate the nature of suffering than ugly visuals straight out of a windows screensaver

the entire film had the visual appeal of stock photography

your reaction to this section may have something to do with how much the Book of Job resonates with you.

what if like me you find the Book of Job beautiful and perplexing and this movie a stiff realization of it?

Well, that's a valid point of view - I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.

I guess some ppl found in ToL a rich explication of humanity's role in the cosmos. The closest I came to that was Contagion.

I bet you giggled softly as you set up your own zing.

That's an interesting parallel. I guess both movies dramatize the human condition: though in "Contagion" the universe's relation to humanity is unequivocally one of supreme indifference, whereas in ToL, it's more ambiguous.

xp

I had my problems with TOL but the childhood section was truly beautiful