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.

The Artist is what SITR would’ve been if it had concentrated exclusively on the Kelly-Reynolds relationship...without songs or jokes.

I suspected as much

I have to stress what a boring nullity this thing is.

You guys seem to be talking about it a lot.

weren’t you talking about Jacko?

Most ppl who are mooning over The Artist have never seen Maddin, and probably no silent films in decades if ever. (Then there are extreme exceptions like Kevin Brownlow and Godfrey Cheshire, which just flummox me.)

have never seen Maddin

same goes for tree of life apparently

Q: should i watch the crappy version of a brighter summer day that i just torrented or wait a billion years for it to somehow become attainable to me otherwise

the 2011 version, that is, which i assume is of better quality

it’s on Google video too.... I would wait, it’s gotta be coming out on DVD in the next year.

schlump, Tabloid is not a mess or anything—quite amusing, actually—but it’s very much television. Like an extended episode of First Person, nothing ambitious about it.

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.

lol, NOT taking this bait

Nat’l Film Registry list gets downright schizo.

● “Allures” (1961)

● “Bambi” (1942)

● “The Big Heat” (1953)

● “A Computer Animated Hand” (1972)

● “Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment” (1963)

● “The Cry of the Children” (1912)

● “A Cure for Pokeritis” (1912)

● “El Mariachi” (1992)

● “Faces” (1968)

● “Fake Fruit Factory” (1986)

● “Forrest Gump” (1994)

● “Growing Up Female” (1971)

● “Hester Street” (1975)

● “I, an Actress” (1977)

● “The Iron Horse” (1924)

● “The Kid” (1921)

● “The Lost Weekend” (1945)

● “The Negro Soldier” (1944)

● Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (1930s-’40s)

● “Norma Rae” (1979)

● “Porgy and Bess” (1959)

● “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)

● “Stand and Deliver” (1988)

● “Twentieth Century” (1934)

● “War of the Worlds” (1953)

● “Stand and Deliver” (1988)

haha waht

I don’t get the doc love for the late-opening El Sicario, Room 164.

also not sure it’s a documentary.

saw Tuesday, After Christmas today. I can’t think of any significant flaws except the fuzziness of the husband’s relations with his in-laws.

heads up non-critics like myself can stream Tuesday, Poetry, Certified Copy and uh Cold Weather on netflix right now

ty, cosmo

i watched poetry just the other day—is v good

Poetry is marvelous.

Will watch CC tomorrow now that I see it’s available.

uncle boonmee also streamable

^^ would stream

you trout!

(oh, catfish I guess)

someone commented in the VV film poll that the “verdant night-scapes and gently materializing apparitions of uncle boonmee” were the best movie moments of the year. agreed!

and finally saw Meek’s Cutoff last night. Kinda thrilling to watch Kelly Reichard handle the sex/race relations. Also a plus to see something where Paul Dano is tolerable.

got my hands on UK horror-thriller Kill List; a little too familiar in some ways (the climax splits the difference between a couple of genre touchstones), but damn if that last 20 minutes didn’t give me heart palpitations.

Tinker Tailor was pretty great. Bellflower was interesting.

finally saw the stylish indie rapefest Martha Marcy Carsey Marilyn Manson. Damn, Brady Corbet is growin’ up real nice.

I forget: did you like Certified Copy?

oh yeah: your #2

Dunno, Corbet seems a little like the guy you’d cast as the real-life version of Chucky in A Child’s Play Pinocchio Christmas Special.

after flirting with American movies Juliette Binoche has become an actress whose performances I look forward to watching.

can’t imagine anything topping certified copy this year except for maybe margaret?

I had about a dozen films btwn those two. Didn’t give much of a damn about the mom in Margaret (u know, actress).

I’m sure the kids appreciated all the Chinatown, Leone and Hunter Thompson refs in Rango.

out of the 160+ films in the VV poll why don’t I see any repping for Wuthering Heights, Pariah, or Oslo, 31 August? Thought these all got some screenings this year.

Pariah just opened in NYC yesterday. Hear much praise for lead performance.

Finally saw Cerified Copy, which I liked a great deal in spite of its Marienbad-La Notte flimflammery. I realized that I wish Juliette Binoche would film a Before Sunrise-esque walking-and-talking film every year. Like I said upthread, this actress is getting more and more fascinating to watch.

wd slap you for invoking Bored Sunrise!

the ‘flimflammery’ makes the movie, if it doesn’t let it touch A Voyage in Italy.

I mean, I think the flimflammery works but the kind of leap of faith of which second viewings are made.

*it’s the kind of

‘certified copy’ is p corny looking but its also really rad

13 assassins was a pointless testosterone blahblahblah, i might actually prefer miike when he’s doing torture porn rather than war porn. i don’t have a history with samurai movies though.

and to completely kill my credibility, the more i think about war horse the more i realize it’s quite a good WW1 movie, conceptually at least.

I want to watch it but I’m not sure I can endure two-hours-plus of equine porn.

i actually really like the idea of War Horse, though i know nothing of the source material. i am kinda afraid to see it. stuff like Au Hasard Balthazar or Umberto D can make me emotional just thinking about them. it’s pathetic.

I didn’t much like the idea or scenario for War Horse at all, really. It’s 100 percent execution.

Really enjoyed Tuesday, After Christmas. The trick to making an asshole interesting is make him seem calm and rational.

alfred and ryan: it is really a lot better when you look at the horse as nothing more than a tool. spielberg actually makes very few attempts to make you care about it as a ‘character’; it really just serves as an unwitting tour guide through devastation-of-war vignettes. dissimilar to au hasard balthazar in that way imo.

I’m irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen. PETA sucks too.

The trick to making an asshole interesting is make him seem calm and rational

Didn’t see any assholes in this film.

we saw it for jew christmas, and my mom who is a decades-long veg/animal rights freak (who would possibly disown me if she ever learned i eat meat) was seriously traumatized for at least an hour afterward. she said “i didn’t care about the fucking horse, it was everything else.” a movie about WW1 shouldn’t seek to inspire anything less than that sentiment.

I’m irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen

YES, this. I keep saying this to people and they think it’s strange.

im not sure they’re mutually exclusive. besides, though i haven’t seen this, the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it’s like a stand in human, who can feel pain and fear and not have any larger understanding as to why. it’s certainly a perfect representation of what happened to people in world war 1.

Excepting that I bet most people knew “why.”

sure, though there are varying levels of “why” i guess. anyway, i’ll shut up until i see it.

the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it’s like a stand in human

yes — but it didn’t work here.

Still better than pretty much everything else that’s gonna get a BP nod.

not convinced that it will or that The Tree of Life won’t.

just watched My Snooze with Marilyn. Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

hey Branagh, yer way more lumpyfaced than Olivier.

Branaugh was the only thing that got me through that movie. Aside from the gofer’s pillowy lips.

AMPAS likes war movies (e.g. the only Malick movie to get a BP nod so far).

wd pay to see Branagh-as-Larry gay movie, but who wd play Danny Kaye?

Larry the Cable Guy

Branagh was awful.

Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

Bless them!

The Prince and the Showgirl is as tin-eared as this thing, at least.

I guess there will be a wave of I-spooned-with-a-legend-during-a-forgettable-movie-shoot memoirs now.

are you trying to cast the Michelle Williams-Heath Ledger biopic now?

The Artist was cute

like a dead kitten.

naw it was kinda charming, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a much more engaging champion for the cause of vocal chords.

TTSS is not the best movie to watch with a buzz. I don’t know what the hell just happened in that one.

Let’s hope Trollhunter is more my speed.

got my hands on UK horror-thriller Kill List; a little too familiar in some ways (the climax splits the difference between a couple of genre touchstones), but damn if that last 20 minutes didn’t give me heart palpitations.

― Simon H., Thursday, 29 December 2011 04:01 (2 days ago) Bookmark

Cannot understand the praise this is getting. I thought it completely incoherent. Obviously everything wasn’t meant to spelled out but the various twists and tonal shifts just didn’t add up to anything, and for all the shocking content i never once felt scared or engaged beyond a sort of mild curiosity as to how (and why) this thing got made.

i loved TTSS despite being lost myself (especially in the last 10 minutes or so) but when i read the wikipedia description of the plot it all seemed pretty straightforward. this leads me to think that part of the brilliance of the movie is that it’s able to so strongly suggest that something else is happening other than the explicit plot. im not exactly putting that right, but there’s definitely a sense that there’s some hidden depth to it.

anyway, i really liked it a lot. reminded me of Zodiac in that it’s a kind of 70s style movie with little to no action that feels very lived in. i cant wait to watch it again.

My feeling regarding TTSS is that Alfredson gives you roughly the minimum visual information needed to piece together the plot specifics, but not much more. I appreciate that very much,

re: Kill List; it basically winds up as a 21st. cent. Wicker Man rehash, but that’s still one more idea than most movies of its ilk, and I found the climax well-rendered.

TTSS felt like it was throwing information (exposition, maybe) at you early on, but it all came together really clearly for me. I love that the moment at the end with Strong and Firth had a lot of heft to it because of seeing a polaroid earlier.

Heh, Shame in stark contrast to TTSS in that nothing is left unclear at all. What a rotten movie. One and a half pretty great performances totally wasted.

And bear in mind, I hate sex a whole lot.

A Separation was pretty tremendous. I guess that disqualifies it from winning the Oscar then.

And now I’ve just realized that it was Ebert’s #1 movie of the year, so it’ll probably be roundly despised around here.

More ire will and should be directed at his #2.

I was planning to see it tomorrow, though I’m not looking forward to it.

fuck this TTSS, and Alfredson come to think of it. He’s been both outremade and pulled off a superfluous rehash.

some people seem to think A Separation is the first really good Iranian film ever (ie, troglodyte blogger Jeff Wells).

yeah, i’m happy enough to see it as a safe, memorable, efficient & worthy #1 for this year, to see it praised, &c; but it doesn’t actually stand out for me as a new or unusual film, against the backdrop of other social iranian drama—i think to some degree i’m reminded of panahi just bc it’s iran, the urban scenes, &c, but it’s v much in that tradition i think, getting under the surface of things in this roaming, weary loop. it is an excellent film & so masterfully woven & paced—like i think someone mentioned hitchcock—but so are a bunch of things, going back ten years

Its probably my favourite foreign nu-release since 4 weeks, 3 months... and a really great melodrama (they don’t come round often so treasure them).

Wd be weird for anyone to say its the first great Iranian film since there’s one or two of them knocking about every year; and then there are guys like Kiarostami around.

i sorta assume it’s people assuming it’s the first great iranian film from a position of ignorance, i can’t imagine anyone repping for it over the canon. i think about 4 months sometimes, i guess i will get back around to catching some of the new czech/related stuff this year—aurora, if it ever opens, & once upon a time in antolia—but it did seem like a really balanced wave. 4 months got the aesthetics of depicting a place without veering into pure appealing optics totally right—a v beautiful looking film but very restrained, in the right register.

I prefer all the Panahi I’ve seen to A Separation. By a fair amount.

I think its one of the best Iranian films I’ve seen, then again I can’t say I’ve seen more than 20. What would the canon be? xp = interesting, love to see more by him.

Austin Film Critics Association:

Best Film:

Hugo

Best Director:

Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Best Actor:

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Best Actress:

Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Best Supporting Actor:

Albert Brooks, Drive

Best Supporting Actress:

Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Drive, Hossein Amini

Best Cinematography:

The Tree of Life, Emmanuel Lubezki

Best Original Score:

Attack the Block, Steven Price

Best Foreign Language Film:

I Saw the Devil, South Korea [dir: Jee-woon Kim]

Best Documentary:

Senna [dir: Asif Kapadia]

Best Animated Feature:

Rango [dir: Gore Verbinski]

Robert R. “Bobby” McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award:

Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter/The Tree of Life/The Help/The Debt/Coriolanus/Texas Killing Fields

Best First Film:

Attack the Block [dir: Joe Cornish]

Austin Film Award:

Take Shelter [dir: Jeff Nichols]

Top 10 Films:

1. Hugo

2. Drive

3. Take Shelter

4. Midnight in Paris

5. Attack the Block

6. The Artist

7. Martha Marcy May Marlene

8. I Saw the Devil

9. 13 Assassins

10. Melancholia

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

Best Original Screenplay:

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen

ugh that top ten.

at least #8–10 can be defended

picking Rango over Tintin = trying too hard

A couple dozen folks give their best moments of ’11:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/moments-of-2011-part-1-20111230

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/moments-of-2011-part-2-20111230

I would co-endorse The Trip DVD as having the best deleted scenes of the year.

YouTube Video

Open

You should watch the tv version. Three hours worth

I believe all the footage excised for the theater version is on the DVD extras.