That’s a more estimable body of work than Clooney’s the last three years (barring Fantastic Mr. Fox).
btw Jane Eyre is quite good.
WIll probably watch Shame first. I think it might appeal to me since everyone who hates it actually enjoys sex.
like a nylon lemon peel
Don’t worry. You can always put that detrius where Michael Fassbender’s dick ought to be.
NBR actually awarded Finding Neverland in ’04, that was a kneeslapper.
(shining from their list is Empire of the Sun in ’87)
Also, I’m sure, a better movie in your estimation than Hugo.
Neversawland
other NBR awards:
Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”
Best Documentary: “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory”
Special Achievement in Filmmaking: The Harry Potter Franchise — A Distinguished Translation from Book to Film
you can almost see the souvenir plastic cup in honoring a “franchise”
Huh, I didn’t realize until today that Steve McQueen isn’t white.
not this one, no
lol
my annual single post to these threads: the john waters list is kind of whatever this year (surprised ‘kevin’s not on it), and i really wish it were easier to see all the stuff on halter’s list (i got to see some of luther price’s earlier super 8 films a few weeks ago, they’re fantastic).
anyway, carry on
McQueen is getting 20x the attention for his crap second film than his brilliant debut.
Eric, Ke1th and D4n seem to somewhat not hate Shame, so I’m not sure that pattern holds up...
i have to know who you are bc your dn choice brings so much joy, silvana
donna rouge, la donna più bella d’italia
ah, awes, hello &c
yeah year end lists are always fascinating & frustrating in equal measure, triply so if you live outsida new york
this thread always makes me feel better abt my own top ten list
McQueen is getting 20x the attention for his crap second film than his brilliant debut.
Do you find this surprising in some way?
I was thinking 10x
Just watched Tinker Tailor. Quite enjoyable, I thought. (Having not yet seen the ’79 version.)
Just watched Beginners and then read Lord Soto’s review which I thought was absolutely spot on. I laughed a lot at the bit about Goran Visnjic’s character
Best Actress: Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Best Original Screenplay: Will Reiser, 50/50
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
Breakthrough Performance: Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Debut Director: J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Best Ensemble: The Help
UGH, I wouldn’t rank a single one of these. (Well, maybe Chandor did an okay job directing, but the script was a big ‘feh’)
Have you seen Dragon Tattoo remy?
Yah, unfortu. P.S. I haven’t seen We Need to Talk About Kevin, I just can’t stand Tilda Swinton in anything people have ever, ever given as an example of a good performance.
Not good then? Didn’t have high hopes tbh
I don’t like the conceit, the book, or the Swedish movie, so I don’t really know why I’d like the remake. But I’m perpetually unimpressed with David Fincher’s technical gimcrackery; I kind of feel he missed his calling as film school survey f/x course professor.
I’ve never had any interest in the DragTat thing, so if they don’t make it easy for me to see it I won’t be troubled.
Woody Harrelson is fine as usual in Rampart, but there’s not much to the film besides the not-so-tragic James Ellroy tale of the fall of a dirty LA cop in the late ’90s.
also saw a beautifully lensed doc-neorealist mix of Thai sharecroppers, Agrarian Utopia.
I just can’t stand Tilda Swinton in anything people have ever, ever given as an example of a good performance.
I’m pretty unreasonable on Tilda too. I can’t remember seeing anything she’s been in and not thinking she’s given the best performance ever.
i guess margaret is out in the uk? peter bradshaw gave it 5 stars~
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/dec/01/margaret-film-review
didn’t like the Italian family thing last year, but she did save Julia from being unredeemably bad. Since I like Lynne Ramsay’s miserabilism I have some hopes for Kevin. xp
It looks like Jaime’s petition worked or had good timing, bcz Margaret is going to get some critic screenings.
if I haven’t mentioned yet, Vanessa R, Brian Cox, and R Fiennes are all stellar in Coriolanus (roughly in that order).
margaret on one (1) screen in the uk fwiw
i would be psyched to catch it on dvd if i didn’t suspect it may only be released on import laserdisc
wld think itd be ripe for ondemand, etc like Melancholia but who knows
also i didnt know scott rudin was a producer of it. sorta shocked he cant get more distro but mb he doesnt want to
there’s a piece in the new sight & sound on its spiteful distro setup, w/bizarre details about contractual limits to running time, etc (w/the edit coming in twelve seconds under the 2 1/2 hr ceiling); does just seem like an act of reprimand to release it so unenthusiastically. i hope the dvd w/the three hour cut comes out, anyway
If I were a writer-director I’d create roles just for Vanessa R.
if it’s true that Scorsese and Schoonmaker edited this cut of Margaret, it’s Marty’s best work in years.
How was Coriolanus? I’m waiting on a screener...
Since I like Lynne Ramsay’s miserabilism I have some hopes for Kevin.
I’ve enjoyed all of her work too, although Morvern Callar a little less than the rest. MC was a little trés dreamy and elliptical for me, and I felt like it suffered a little from story-lack. But the source material for Kevin is pretty dense and phenom, and if it doesn’t fall to sentimentality I think it will be a fantastic – difficult—film.
I went in not knowing it was gonna be contemporary, shot partly in the Balkans with Hurt Locker-style shooting (same DP), lotsa cable news tableaus etc, and was pleasantly surprised. Can’t think of a Shakespeare film I’ve liked since the Hawke/Almereyda Hamlet.
xp
Have you guys read the play? That charater’s so difficult to render.
I haven’t, and I bet cutting half the text was a good move here. RF has played it on stage before.
I was actually planning on reading it this weekend prior to watching – a co-teacher recommended it as “Hamlet, but for grown-ups.”
Sounds minor.
re: Scorsese and Margaret, according to Lonergan, he worked on a “fuller” cut that no one’s seen yet.
I don’t really like the tragedies that much, except for Othello.
I’m not sure this comes across as a tragedy! Caius Martius is such a prick. There should be more parts for 75ish actresses in butch military drag, tho.
Eric, how can something with world-class classical acting be considered mino... oh, you.
I didn’t recognize Vincent Cassel in his meaty, brief A Dangerous Methodrole after being left with the caricature he drew in the ballet potboiler last winter.
Morbs, you’re getting me awfully psyched to see the Cronenberg — too bad the nearest it will come to this location is at least a 2 hour drive, and possibly more like 3 1/2.
I think it helps w/ ADM to believe psychoanalysis is essentially ridiculous, as I do in my Irish Catholic heart.
RF has played it on stage before.
Apparently the first acting job Gerard Butler ever had was in the ensemble of Coriolanus. History!
much barely sublimated man-pounding btwn Fiennes and Butler here
Detrius ’12 all wrapped up.
http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/12/02/tim-erics-billion-dollar-movie-red-band-trailer
yesssss.
Since I didn’t crack a smile, I suppose those guys are big on cable.
Typical NYC award screening attendee on line for The Artist: 80-year-old woman who asks “Is this the one with Meryl Streep?”
Huh, seems I’m the one who likes comedy now.
the unfunny post-1977 kind yah
What does 1977 represent? Annie Hall?
Kentucky Fried Movie?
Star Wars
Annie Hall, Let’s Get Small, an extra year of Bicentennial Nigger, the deaths of Chaplin and Groucho
...the last time Jimmy Carter boasted high approval ratings
So it’s even then. You don’t like unfunny post 1977 comedies, and I don’t like unfunny pre-1950 comedies.
LOL, meant to type 1960
What does 1960 represent — Nixon/Kennedy debate?
The year comedy became funny.
What does 1960 represent — Nixon/Kennedy debate?
It was three years before It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
There are no unfunny pre-1950 comedies btw.
(also in ’77: Mary Tyler Moore Show ends, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett enter their last seasons, SNL permanently shakes off most of the edge it initially had)
The first half-hour of War Horse is dreadfully familiar, some great images here and there after that. I would say it’s SS’s least interesting film since Jurassic Park 2 if I’d seen that one.
There was a Q&A after with Janusz Kaminski, Michael Kahn, Kathleen Kennedy. At an INDUSTRY GUILD screening in NYC, some woman rose and asked if John Williams was the only guy considered to do the score. It’s true, nobody knows anything in showbiz.
(btw she was clearly unaware that JW has done all his scores for 40 years)
Take Shelter was quite good, except for the usual indie film gripe, i.e. the writer-director can’t end the film properly.
Chastain’s oppressed normality deserves as much props as Shannon and his flop sweat.
house of pleasures, as its being called in the US i guess, is on amazon instant to stream for $7/$8 (HD)
i liked it, its def a bit blunt when it gets around to making its points but i enjoyed the languid time it took getting there
it is a big Sicinski fave, I will see it this week at the IFC Center.
I found the new incarnation of Tinker Tailor a bore, sorry spyfans.
it’s just v efficient or i guess slightly more generous deft, i think. surprised to see it in top ten lists
Wow, I actually thought a movie was better than Swinton’s performance therein, for once.
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:
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.”