There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

I want to come after you, lex. Not that way.

Shots of the two brothers crying after learning they're going to have to move are one of the year's emotional apexes fuiud.

i keep thinking its strange to really love 'tree of life' or 'margaret' but not the other cuz they feel so similarly satisfying and ambitious and big but i guess its actually not all that strange

hiya eric.

margaret is so much more human than tree of life - i mean it's not as simple as me just preferring human interaction to abstraction b/c i feel ToL completely fails on an abstract, visual level too, but that's certainly one reason i'd respond to one and not the other.

margaret reminded me in a sideways fashion of synecdoche ny, it had that same sort of widescreen grandeur at the same time as putting the human condition under the microscope. (except i found synecdoche ny a little annoying, or maybe i just can't be bothered to care about the male mid-life crisis in any sort of art any more.)

you really can't beat a film-critic party where someone does an impression of Richard Brody w/ jazz hands

The Artist is crap.

yes, it is to Singin' in the Rain & Guy Maddin what Drive is to Le Samourai & The Driver.

well, I voted for the OMGSociety nominees, my #1s being Cert Copy, Paquin, Shannon, Pitt (Tree), Berlin.

Oops.

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

― degas-dirty monet (lex pretend), Wednesday, December 21, 2011 2:23 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Permalink

http://bf-1.com/BF1-TV/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/taylorswift_taylorswift_v3.jpg

i think the "hallmark" or "kitsch" criticisms are fair for Tree of Life but i also think they miss how fucking disorienting and strange it is as well. not sure how "kitsch" or "hallmark" accounts for, say, that truly freaky image of a clown that pops up half way though. or any number of other things. i think maybe those kinds of responses are probably as much against the sort of middle class American/Christian sensibility that the film seems to be at least on some level to be about. ie, "this is hallmark" = this is not a movie meant for me.

especially since i think the movie seems to presume a pretty wide knowledge about religion/theology. what's particularly weird is how Job and the "tree of life" notion in the Kabbalah seem to intersect (not to mention how "tree of life" is a biological term too!), how both of those texts have a creation myth and how they relate to suffering.

also, in terms of kitsch, it's really interesting (especially in the way critics have responded) to compare TOL to something like Melancholia (which seems equally kitschy, if more knowing about it).

the OFCS nominations are mostly boring or worse, but these 2 categories came out OK:

Best Film Not in the English Language:

13 Assassins
Certified Copy
A Separation
The Skin I Live In
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Best Documentary:

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
The Interrupters
Into the Abyss
Project Nim
Tabloid

http://www.ofcs.org/2011/12/15th-annual-online-film-critics-society.html

Saw Young Adult. The first half hour is the best work of Reitman's career: taut and mordant. Then the movie succumbs to tonal imbalance and the Cody-Reitman ethos of going for the throat, in every sense. I wish Charlize Theron was a legit Oscar contender though, as she's fantastic -- her best work, I think.

Yeah, I'd def. have thrown her a nomination vote for the OFCS awards had I seen it in time. (And yes, the actual nods are a bore for the most part.)

xp but just wanted to otm those ryan posts above, they went unotmed

Brad Pitt got the shaft for Moneyball. I can live with that.

tabloid and cave of forgotten dreams can both go away now.

yeah I'm pretty much a Morris stan but after waiting over a year to see it, I found Tabloid to be his least interesting movie by some distance.

aw this is depressing to hear. that it's been mentioned in the same breath as gates of heaven has me so psyched. it's sorta interesting because his style circa GoH was so exquisitely appropriate & formally suitable, & i find his flourishes on stuff like standard operating procedure so excessive & detrimental, i don't know where tabloid will fall.

Tabloid's good, he doesn't have to produce some deathless masterwork every time out. At least there's no motherfucking evil Banksy 'documentary' this year.

tabloid and cave of forgotten dreams can both go away now

Think Tabloid edges the other one for Most Disappointing Offering From Its Director or Biggest Waste of a Trip to IFC.

At least there's no motherfucking evil Banksy 'documentary' this year.

i feel petulant for never having seen this, & occasionally wonder whether i'm stubbornly resisting some rogue f for fake meisterwerk on account of my prejudice against its author, so TY for denigrating. i just can't imagine it being good.

seeing tabloid & margaret next month so will contribute. cave of forgotten dreams was good, it was in service to its material. blown away by into the abyss, though.

I figured Eric manipulsted the OFCS nominations all by himself given the Margaret/Dangerous Method i-didnt -see-it hatred.

May vote for von Trier for best director since 1) he may be the most deserving of the five and 2) it's virtually abstaining.

Errol Morris is a Great Filmmaker if you think pet cemeteries and crazy filthy crones are fascinating, I guess. #notgayenough

gabbneb, stick to electing police-state Democrats.

May vote for von Trier for best director since 1) he may be the most deserving of the five and 2) it's virtually abstaining.

i find tree of life slightly gracelessly put together in parts but in terms of realising his vision it whups melancholia, which is so misjudged & loose for something so high concept

yeah, I can't get too psyched for voting for either LvT's best film in awhile or Malick's worst.

I only give credit when other ppl's vision matches my own.

Errol Morris is a Great Filmmaker if you think pet cemeteries and crazy filthy crones are fascinating, I guess. #notgayenough

If he's a Great Filmmaker, it's because he freed someone from death row, an impact I don't immediately recall any other film matching. While somewhat pornographic, this time around almost literally, his voyeuristic commitment to uprooting truths is valuable, even if its value varies somewhat with the subject matter, this time falling relatively low on the scale because he wasn't telling us much of anything new.

gabbneb, stick to electing police-state Democrats

I will be exercising my temporarily unabridged freedom of speech, thanks. Remind what liberties Obama has taken from you again?

go fuck yourself

Huh, I didn't even nominate Kevin in screenplay.

Oh, and The New World is far and away Malick's worst fuiud.

morbius telling gabbneb to STFU somehow perfectly encapsulating everything good about a sb-free board

he freed someone from death row

def deserved the Nobel over the Smooth Criminal

Are you reminding us that Obama is half-black? I don't have much of an opinion on the appropriateness of the prize, perhaps because I don't take it especially seriously (the sciences and other achievements less in the public eye moreso), but I think it quite likely that Obama has saved more lives, net, than Morris.

Are you reminding us that Obama is half-black?

wtg morbs, can't believe you're suggesting blacks shouldn't get the nobel

What do you propose is the significance of comparing Obama to Michael Jackson, schlump?

whites shouldn't get it either

What do you propose is the significance of comparing Obama to Michael Jackson, schlump?

It's the song title, fool.

Thanks, I've been aware since age 11. Why was the song title of one of the other most famous black people in the world selected as an appellation?

cuz he's a silver-tongued war criminal according to Morbz.

This is really not that difficult.

What do you propose is the significance of comparing Obama to Michael Jackson, schlump?

i am totally with you, i think 'smooth criminal' referred covertly to michael jackson, like the song, reminding us of how those two guys are similar, rather than being a neat encapsulation of how obama might be perceived, smooth, like how you might describe a good, camera-friendly orator, & criminal, the thing we are discussing, his purported criminal acts.

MJ was black iirc, & your weird 'half-black' pluck is further out than anything anyone else is saying

"your weird 'half-black' pluck is further out than anything anyone else is saying"

I was merely being precise wrt Obama. MJ, of course, lost a great deal of pigmentation, so there is some parallel there.

your sensitivity has lost a great deal of pigmentation today.

dirty detrius, yeah

I bet gabbneb likes The Artist, too

OH NO, PRINCE REF

That is what I thought of first, being that music is the greater medium.

Obama has saved more lives, net,

"net" is what should be thrown over you.

That seems insensitive somehow.

The Artist is crap.

― Lord Sotosyn, Friday, December 23, 2011 10:19 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Permalink

yes, it is to Singin' in the Rain & Guy Maddin what Drive is to Le Samourai & The Driver.

I was wondering about this - the breathless reviews I've read, none of them have cited Maddin or Singin' In The Rain, both of which seem like such obvious touchstones/reference points. It's like people forgot these movies existed or something.

music is the greater medium.

haha okay waht

It's like people forgot these movies existed or something.

It's possible. Watching The Artist made me forget that movies can ever be any good.