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Post by Ace on Dec 17, 2010 18:40:34 GMT -5
www.hitfix.com/blogs/awards-campaign-2009/posts/carlos-and-social-network-lead-film-comments-2010-poll'Carlos' and 'Social Network' lead Film Comment's 2010 poll
By Gregory Ellwood - Guess who made the top 50?Friday, Dec 17, 2010 6:25 PM The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced Film Comment's 2010 year-end poll results and "Carlos," "The Social Network" and "White Material" finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Other potential awards contenders to make the top 20 were "The Ghost Writer" (#4), "Winter's Bone" (#6), "Inside Job" (#7), "Toy Story 3" (#12), "Another Year" (#14), "The Kids Are All Right" (#16). More prominent Oscar players such as "Black Swan" (#24), "Inception" (#30), "True Grit" (#42) and "The King's Speech" (#44) finished much further down the list. Complied from over 100 journalists, critics, film historians, professors and filmmakers, the annual poll is considered one of the more prestigious end of year lists in the cineaste community including LA Times critic Kenneth Turan, New York Magazine's David Edelstein, Cal Arts professor and indie filmmaker Tom Anderson, director Paul Schrader and Andrew Sarris among others. One of the most striking aspect of the list is that Polanski's "Ghost Writer" not just made the top 10, but came in at no. 4 which seems to indicate it will make a lot of top 10's (it made mine). Strangely, hardly any awards push has been minimal by distributor Summit Entertainment. Did the "Hurt Locker" studio make a mistake not getting behind "Writer" full force? Additionally, "Winter's Bone" strong showing also indicates many to 10 lists to come and not only is leading lady Jennifer Lawrence looking like a nominee, but the film is trending that way as well. That's a scenario many, including myself, thought inconceivable a few months ago. Here is the entire top 50 list. 1. Carlos 2. The Social Network 3. White Material 4. The Ghost Writer5. A Prophet 6. Winter’s Bone 7. Inside Job 8. Wild Grass 9. Everyone Else 10. Greenberg 11. Mother 12. Toy Story 3 13. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl 14. Another Year 15. The Strange Case of Angelica 16. The Kids Are All Right 17. Shutter Island 18. Around a Small Mountain 19. Our Beloved Month of August 20. Ne change rien 21. Dogtooth 22. I Am Love 23. Sweetgrass 24. Black Swan 25. The Father of My Children 26. Boxing Gym 27. Secret Sunshine 28. Bluebeard 29. Enter the Void 30. Inception 31. Alamar 32. The Oath 33. Exit Through the Gift Shop 34. World on a Wire 35. Animal Kingdom 36. Vincere 37. Daddy Longlegs 38. Lourdes 39. Life During Wartime 40. Fish Tank 41. Please Give 42. True Grit 43. Lebanon 44. The King’s Speech 45. I Love You Phillip Morris 46. Last Train Home 47. Blue Valentine 48. Hadewijch 49. The Anchorage 50. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno
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Post by Ace on Dec 17, 2010 21:09:17 GMT -5
NY Times lists They all list 25-30 films and Manohla doesn't even bother with a top 10. ;D
Manohla Dargis
In a year of great and good and weird and interesting films, and many more mediocre ones, I decided that more was more. To that end, I offer roughly 30 titles, some shot on film, others in digital or some combination of the two. Some of these I loved unconditionally while others I loved only in part. But all kept me engaged while I was watching, and their spell always lasted long after the final credits. For this I thank their creators. I also encourage you to seek them out if you haven’t seen them already.
In no order: “Sweetgrass” (Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor); “The Ghost Writer” (Roman Polanski); “Shutter Island” (Martin Scorsese); “A Prophet” (Jacques Audiard); “Vincere” (Marco Bellocchio); “Everyone Else” (Maren Ade); “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” (Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg); “Wild Grass” (Alain Resnais); “The Kids Are All Right” (Lisa Cholodenko); “Inception” (Christopher Nolan); “A Film Unfinished” (Yael Hersonski); “The Tillman Story” (Amir Bar-Lev); “Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1” (Jean-François Richet); “Last Train Home” (Lixin Fan); “Enter the Void” (Gaspar Noé); three shorts by Nathaniel Dorsky (“Aubade,” “Compline” and “Pastourelle”); “Get Out of the Car” (Thom Andersen); “The Social Network” (David Fincher); “A Loft” (Ken Jacobs); “Inside Job” (Charles Ferguson); “Carlos” (Olivier Assayas); “Boxing Gym” (Frederick Wiseman); “127 Hours” (Danny Boyle); “Tiny Furniture” (Lena Dunham); “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench” (Damien Chazelle); “White Material” (Claire Denis); “Black Swan” (Darren Aronofsky); “The Fighter” (David O. Russell); “True Grit” (Joel and Ethan Coen); “Secret Sunshine” (Lee Chang-dong); “The Strange Case of Angelica” (Manoel de Oliveira).
A.O Scott
The 10 Best Movies of 2010
1. INSIDE JOB (Charles Ferguson) The crisis of finance capitalism as a great crime story.
2. TOY STORY 3 (Lee Unkrich) The triumph of consumer capitalism as an epic love story.
3. CARLOS (Olivier Assayas) The failure of global revolution as farce, melodrama, erotic thriller and music video.
4. SOMEWHERE (Sofia Coppola) An eccentric, perfect poem about fame, loneliness and cross-generational need.
5. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Lisa Cholodenko) An eccentric, perfect comedy about love, betrayal and cross-generational confusion.
6. GREENBERG (Noah Baumbach) A deliberately imperfect comedy about an eccentric fleeing from love, running from betrayal and wallowing in cross-generational confusion.
7. 127 HOURS (Danny Boyle) It’s all fun until someone loses an arm. And then, strangely enough, it’s even more fun.
8. LAST TRAIN HOME (Lixin Fan) The future of global capitalism, in China and elsewhere: a family tragedy in the form of a documentary, as full of anger, dignity and pathos as a play by Arthur Miller.
9. SECRET SUNSHINE (Lee Chang-dong) A family tragedy from South Korea, in the form of a melodramatic crime story. As dense and gripping as a great novel.
10. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy) All of the above. None of the above. Everything and nothing. An elaborate art-world stunt in the form of a documentary. Or vice versa.
RUNNERS-UP (Alphabetical Order) “And Everything Is Going Fine,” “Another Year,” “Black Swan,” “Boxing Gym,” “The Father of My Children,” “The Fighter,” “A Film Unfinished,” “Fish Tank,” “Four Lions,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Howl,” “I Am Love,” “Let Me In,” “Please Give,” “Solitary Man,” “Tangled,” “Tiny Furniture,” “Vincere,; “White Material,” “Winter’s Bone
Stephen Holden:
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
2. INSIDE JOB
3. INCEPTION
4. CARLOS Olivier Assayas’s 5 ½-hour docudrama about the life and times of the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal is a study of swaggering, lethal narcissism with an imposing lead performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez. Its great set piece reconstructs the kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in December 1975.
5. ANOTHER YEAR The English filmmaker Mike Leigh is a contemporary, cinematic offshoot of Charles Dickens. His newest group study portrait of humble working-class lives is one of his best movies and features indelible performances by Jim Broadbent, Leslie Manville and Ruth Sheen.
6. VINCERE Marco Bellocchio’s portrait of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Mussolini’s mistress who claimed to be his first wife and was imprisoned in a mental hospital, is a tragicomic little opera of a movie that savagely mocks the vainglorious Italian dictator.
7. WHITE MATERIAL In this Claire Denis film, Isabelle Huppert gives a typically crackling performance as the white French co-owner of a coffee plantation in an unidentified African country, who refuses to leave when civil strife erupts.
8. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT What does it say about our changing times that Ms. Cholodenko’s portrait of a nontraditional clan headed by a lesbian couple is the most believable and heartfelt film about an American family of the last several years?
9. TRUE GRIT Not a remake of the John Wayne classic, the Coen brothers’ adaptation of the Charles Portis novel leaches out most of the boisterous humor to treat the story as a stately black comedy with breathtaking cinematography by Roger Deakins.
10. MY DOG TULIP Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the exquisite hand-drawn screen adaptation of J. R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir chronicles his late-life 15-year relationship with a beloved dog, devoting much attention to her bathroom and mating habits.
RUNNERS-UP (in no order): “The Ghost Writer,” “Fish Tank,” “A Prophet,” “Mid-August Lunch,” “Greenberg,” “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “I Am Love,” “Toy Story 3,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Lebanon,” “Animal Kingdom,” “The Tillman Story,” “Boxing Gym” and “Blue Valentine.”
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Post by Ace on Dec 18, 2010 0:56:43 GMT -5
movies.msn.com/movies/year-in-review/moments-out-of-time/MOMENTS OUT OF TIME Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's films By Richard T. Jameson & Kathleen Murphy Special to MSN Movies - The wall that is, and isn't, there: "The Ghost Writer"... - In the hills at night, car lights on a distant curve of road—"The American" and "Let Me In"... - Gold-brown chicks cupped in Teardrop's (John Hawkes) palms; memento mori in "Winter's Bone"... - The nub of a dark quill growing out of Nina's (Natalie Portman) shoulder blade: "Black Swan"... - "You'd do that for me?"—a line spoken to, and later by, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in "The Social Network"; the addressee not getting it in either case... - Nic (Annette Bening) getting lost in singing Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" during a dinner party—"The Kids Are All Right"... - Catherine Keener's cheekbones, "Please Give"... - "Hereafter": Three blocks away, down the street, trees are falling: Marie's (Cécile De France) first awareness of the tsunami.... - Mattie's (Hailee Steinfeld) bucket floating away downstream after she sees Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), "True Grit"... - Stretching away from his dead arm to dabble his toes in a spill of sunlight ... Aron Ralston (James Franco), sometime during "127 Hours"... - At the beginning of "Sweetgrass," a sheep viewed in profile for a long time suddenly turns, stops chewing its cud, and looks directly and intensely into our eyes.... - Jews in the Warsaw street apprehensively eying the camera, "A Film Unfinished"... - The Escher-like folding over of Parisian skyline, "Inception"... - A man the height of a lighthouse, "Ondine"... - "Monsters": Lovemaking all over the sky... - "Winter's Bone": The ghastly blue twilight in which Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) and the weird sisters search for Jessup Dolly... - Pink glow on a ferry dock empty of cars and everyone except "The Ghost Writer"... - During an assassins' picnic, a butterfly trembles for a moment on the woman's sweater—harbinger of hope and death in "The American"... - The Saudi oil minister, terror-struck yet self-possessed, while Carlos the Jackal (Edgar Ramirez) explains the agenda: "I'm going to kill you. Not yet."—"Carlos"... - In "The Fighter," Dicky (Christian Bale) enticing Mom (Melissa Leo) into a duet of "I started the joke / That started the whole world / Crying"... - Street scene in "Blue Valentine": Backed by shop-window light and a heart-shaped wreath, the girl (Michelle Williams) in a bright-red sweater soft-shoes while her lover (Ryan Gosling) warbles, "You always break the heart of the one you love"... - "Black Swan": Nina, in a moment of especial distraction, freezes backstage as her monstrous dreamtime tormentor appears; he says "Hey...," and walks on by.... - Bus interior, "Let Me In": happy schoolkids on an outing, their bus moving into the countryside, reflections from the snow streaming overhead... - Dad (Adrien Brody) teaching bird-legged Dren (Delphine Chanéac) to dance, "Splice"... - Algorithm upon a windowpane, "The Social Network"... - Shades of "The 39 Steps" in "The Ghost Writer": Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson as avatars of Richard Hannay and Professor Jordan in the study... - In "The King's Speech," Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) beginning his audition for the role of Richard III, and cheerfully making a sound like "aardvark"... - "Goodbye, sweet hat"—the Cheshire Cat as read by Stephen Fry, "Alice in Wonderland"... - In unobtrusive reprise of contact between "Black Stallion" castaways, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) averts his eyes and extends a hand to be nosed by an ebony dragon—"How to Train Your Dragon"... - Joni (Mia Wasikowska) says goodbye to her feckless father (Mark Ruffalo) in "The Kids Are All Right": "I just wish you had been ... better."... - Beating a woman (Jessica Alba) in close quarters, for what seems forever and to the death—"The Killer Inside Me"... - On a makeshift stage, Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) unravels his tale of original sin and lifelong penance, painting the one truly cinematic picture in "Get Low"; the manic fluttering of fingers and sibilant whispers shooting up like flames.... - A bear rides out of the brush in "True Grit": "Do either of you need medical attention?"... - A ghostly white hart—star of Arthurian myth and Miyazaki's sublime "Princess Mononoke"—drifting through a frozen forest, leading Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) to the Sword of Gryffindor; arguably the lone moment of magic in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I"... - That improbable white American Colonial box set down like a child's playhouse in a green, dripping forest; just another trick-the-eye-and-mind stage set haunted by "The Ghost Writer"... - An act of extreme faith in "127 Hours": free-falling down a narrow cleft between walls of rock, to plunge into an enchanted pool... - "Sweetgrass": Grainy, dying-light photography of rider, who turns silhouette head to camera as he passes: "Watch your step"... - Smudged colors and texture of Irish nightfall, rendered as never before, in "Ondine," by Christopher Doyle... - The road to the beach in unrelenting rain, "The Ghost Writer"... - The tenderness of casting Nathalie Richard as Madame, "Never Let Me Go"... - Flat-out decency of the Army recruiting officer (nonprofessional actor Russell Schalk) whom Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) visits in "Winter's Bone": "Buckle up ... stay home."... - In passing, the grace of Richard Jenkins ... "Let Me In": the aging vampire-lover tries to postpone his replacement—"Please don't see that boy again"; his death off-screen in "Dear John," while his son monologues; another broken father looking for absolution, the only genuine quester in "Eat Pray Love"... - "I Love You, Phillip Morris": Oblivious to mayhem around them, two lovers (Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor) slow dance in a prison cell, blissed out by Johnny Mathis's "Chances Are" (thank you, Cleavon!)... - "The Kids Are All Right": Jules (Julianne Moore), having unzipped Paul's (Mark Ruffalo) trou, sizes up the situation and says, "Oh — well — hell-o!"... - The uncanny resemblance between Christian Bale's Dicky Eklund in "The Fighter" and John Sayles in dumb mode.... - "A Prophet": the moment when godfather César Luciani (Niels Arestrup) becomes just another schmuck... - Sign of our times: huge decal of wannabe street artist Thierry Guetta's face plastered over the side of a building in the City of Angels, a nobody's "I exist!" writ large, signifying nothing. "Exit Through the Gift Shop"... - "A Film Unfinished": Grief and joy of an elderly survivor as she watches footage of the Warsaw Ghetto's walking dead, indifferent to emaciated bodies lying in the street: "I am happy to be human again!"... - Early in "The Ghost Writer," the contained 3D infinity of airport lights behind the Ghost (Ewan McGregor) as he expresses his first doubts about the job he's accepted... - Courtship by blind taste test: Matt Damon and Bryce Dallas Howard, "Hereafter"... - "I don't think of them as breasts—just tubes of potential danger"; Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), provider of mammograms in "Please Give"... - The slow relaxation of Karen's (Annette Bening) pinched, angry features into maternal love as she gazes at her housekeeper's sleeping daughter, in "Mother and Child"; the shock that flash-freezes Nic's (Bening) face after she finds her wife's hair where it ought not to be, "The Kids Are All Right"... - The way Melissa Leo's devouring mom lips a cigarette in "The Fighter"... - The tender concavity between Nina's (Natalie Portman) hips, as one of her projected selves (Mila Kunis) makes love to her racked flesh—"Black Swan"... - Lionel Logue in "The King's Speech," his face a-droop with houndlike hurt, stands transfixed in the park, watching his friend and king walk away.... - "Oo, hermit money. That's good." Bill Murray, "Get Low"... - "Machete don't text!" Well, of course not. Danny Trejo, "Machete"... - In "44 Inch Chest," the entrance of Ian McShane, resplendent though not at the moment rampant: "What's clickin', kittens?"... - "Exit Through the Gift Shop": The assessment of a passerby after she's seen Banksy's phonebooth installation: "Someone is annoyed with BT Telephone."... - The reflection of a Nazi cinematographer in a Warsaw shop window: death's scavenger, devouring images and stealing souls in "A Film Unfinished"... - The metallic whine of a windmill turning: the sound life makes in "Winter's Bone"... - "I know you," insists the transplanted Frenchwoman (Isabelle Huppert) in Africa, menaced by gun-brandishing black villagers turned rebels, their gazes as empty as lions surveying prey: the ethnic abyss in "White Material"... - "A Prophet": Malik's (Tahar Rahim) brief conversation with a civilized man—"You must learn to read and write"—cut short by razor blade... - "True Grit": The death of Little Blackie on a moonlit plain, under a frame-filling sky full of stars... - "Never Let Me Go": The dreadful understanding that suffuses Carey Mulligan's face, long before the boy she loves (Andrew Garfield) catches on: "There are no deferrals."... - The mutual, horrific homicide of Fred and Ginger, the lab-created heaps of gray, eyeless flesh whose extended pink-petal "tongues" once intertwined in lovely and loving dance—"Splice"... - A woman who may be dead, eyed underwater by a teddy bear—"Hereafter"... - "Let Me In": Car sitting on country road after train has passed; the red lights stop flashing, the barrier arms rise; the distant mountains abiding... - In "Sweetgrass," an endlessly receding zoom downslope at the herd, till cloud shadows sweep the whole valley; the sound level holding meanwhile as, phoning home from the high country, a sheep wrangler (Pat Connolly) at the end of his tether vents: "I don't want to learn to hate these mountains."... - In "A Film Unfinished," a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto bemused at the sixty-year-old faked scene she is watching projected: "Who ever had a flower in their apartment? We would have eaten the flower!"... - As wife (Michelle Williams) and child disappear from the frame, a man (Ryan Gosling) walks slowly out of focus, toward the color and pop of fireworks at the end of the street: Independence Day in "Blue Valentine"... - In "The Kids Are All Right" Jules (Julianne Moore), penitent, nails it: "Bottom line, marriage is hard ... f**kin' hard ... just two people slogging through the s**t year after year ... getting older ... changing ... it's a f**kin' marathon."... - "Winter's Bone": Framed in his truck's rearview mirror, gun barrel showing, Teardrop (John Hawkes) stares dead-eyed at the cop (Garret Dillahunt) who's just pulled him over: "Is this gonna be our time?"... - "I fired mounted and I fired wide." LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) wistful about the closest he ever got to Chaney, in "True Grit"... - "Please Give": Kate (Catherine Keener) offering boxed leftovers—"Are you hungry?"—to an elderly black man ... who's just waiting in line for a table at his favorite restaurant... - Dicky, in "The Fighter," walking away from the crack house; noticing cake icing on his fingers, he absentmindedly licks it.... - "Ondine": As the lad (Colin Farrell) who may have fallen for a silkie exits the confessional, his wry priest (Stephen Rea) calls after him: "Keep me informed of developments."... - "Let Me In": The man looking pleadingly as he's drained, his beseeching hand seemingly to be answered by that of Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) ... which takes the handle of the door and pulls it closed... - The servant sweeping sand from the patio, surrounded by beach and dunes—"The Ghost Writer"... Richard T. Jameson has been editor of Movietone News (1971-81) and Film Comment (1990-2000) magazines, as well as Seattle's Queen Anne News (2003-2007). He has been a member of the National Society of Film Critics since 1980. Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News and writes essays on film for Steadycam magazine. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross.
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Post by Ace on Dec 18, 2010 17:42:47 GMT -5
Washington Post: Ann Hornaday's top 10 films of 2010www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121802473.htmlBy Ann Hornaday Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 18, 2010; 4:14 PM There are great years in movies and bad years in movies, and by all accounts 2010 has been . . . pretty good. As often happens when looking at the films that opened over the past several months, it wasn't difficult to come up with a list of the 10 best. If anything, in a year that included such standouts as "Rabbit Hole," "True Grit," "The King's Speech," "Black Swan," "Get Low," "The Fighter" and "Toy Story 3," it was difficult choosing what to leave off. These are my 10 best films of 2010: "The Social Network" This sharply written, subtly directed movie featured a lead performance as commanding as it was recessive from Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a suitably ambiguous hero for an era when privacy, notions of personal vs. public space and relationships themselves have undergone radical re-thinking. "127 Hours" Danny Boyle's portrait of real-life adventurer Aron Ralston imbued his inspiring story of survival with verve, excitement and profound humanism, anchored by a breakout lead performance from James Franco. "The Tillman Story" Amir Bar-Lev's exquisitely crafted documentary about former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman not only put his story into crucial context, but also offered a provocative meditation on myth, propaganda and our abiding need for narrative neatness. "I Am Love" Tilda Swinton starred in one of the most polarizing movies of the year, a mesmerizing throwback to the melodramas of Douglas Sirk and lush historical tableaux of Luchino Visconti in which sensual pleasures drenched almost every scene. "Please Give" The neuroses of real-estate obsessed Manhattanites ricocheted with tone-perfect angst in Nicole Holofcener's comedy of contemporary manners, by turns a wry and wistful observation of the implications of love and family and neighbors and stuff. "Inception" This ambitious head trip of a movie earned extra points for not being part of a franchise, based on a comic book or adapted from a play. Instead, writer-director Chris Nolan made that rarity in Hollywood: an original movie, in this case realized with vision and smarts. "No One Knows About Persian Cats" Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi gave viewers a vital, progressive view of modern-day Tehran in this fact-based picaresque through the city's raucous, diverse underground music scene. "The Kids Are All Right" Like the equally heart-rending "Toy Story 3," this funny family drama (or wrenching family comedy) centered on that bittersweet moment when that first kid leaves home for college; the fact that the parents letting go were two mothers was almost incidental, leaving audiences with a familiar, cheerful shrug: This is what family looks like. "The Ghost Writer" This sleek, stylish political thriller of the old school from Roman Polanski starred Pierce Brosnan as an uncannily Tony Blair-like former British prime minister and created the ethereal world of the super-powerful with hushed, velvety verisimilitude."Fair Game" Doug Liman's concentrated, well-calibrated revisiting of the story of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson avoided ax-grinding in favor of a taut drama that reminded viewers that even the most cynically stage-managed political theater possesses unseen human stakes.
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Post by Ace on Dec 20, 2010 22:40:21 GMT -5
Indiewire's final results - from the submitted ballots of 124 critics: www.indiewire.com/survey/annual_critics_survey_2010/[Follow link for full results and link to individual critic lists] Best Film# Film Title/ Score / Mentions 1 The Social Network 466 71 2 Carlos 360 50 3 Winter's Bone 263 42 4 Black Swan 260 36 5 Everyone Else 251 40 6 Dogtooth 202 31 7 The Ghost Writer 193 378 Mother 188 31 9 I Am Love 162 27 10 Another Year 157 28 11 Wild Grass 157 22 Best Director # Film Title / Score / Mentions 1 David Fincher, The Social Network 18 18 2 Olivier Assayas, Carlos 16 16 3 Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan 13 13 4 Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer 8 85 Gaspar Noe, Enter the Void 5 5 Best Supporting Performance (Genderless)# Film Title Score Mentions 1 John Hawkes, Winter's Bone 113 31 2 Christian Bale, The Fighter 97 27 3 Michael Fassbender, Fish Tank 82 23 4 Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom 81 28 5 Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right 72 24 6 Greta Gerwig, Greenberg 70 19 7 Andrew Garfield, The Social Network 64 18 8 Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech 51 14 Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer 51 14 9 Lesley Manville, Another Year 46 12 10 Melissa Leo, The Fighter 35 11 11 Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer 32 9
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Post by Ace on Dec 20, 2010 22:45:30 GMT -5
www.screendaily.com/news/uk-ireland/kings-speech-another-year-lead-london-critics-circle-nominations/5021802.article21 December, 2010 | By Wendy Mitchell The London Critics’ Circle has announced the nominees for its 31st Film Awards, led by The King’s Speech and Another Year with seven nominations each. The Social Network received five nominations, and The Arbor and True Grit each garnered four. The Critics’ Circle Film Awards will be held for the first time at BFI Southbank on February 10, to benefit the group’s new charity partner, the BFI Archive. The Circle’s 120+ members voted for 197 different titles this year, and now nominees will have second-round voting via ballot. Partners on the event include Sky 3D and Moet & Chandon. The Circle’s Chairman, Jason Solomons said: “The critics have been bowled over by the variety and excellence of the nominees this year, from old favourites on top form, such as Mike Leigh, to stupendous debuts such as Clio Barnard’s The Arbor. I am also delighted that our awards will be at BFI Southbank, Britain’s home of film culture, and that everyone attending the event will help towards the preservation of the nation’s celluloid treasures for future generations of filmmakers, critics and cinema lovers.” “We are delighted that BFI Southbank will be the host venue for these special Awards from 2011 onwards”, added BFI Director of DevelopmentFrancesca Vinti. “And for the Film Critics’ Circle to choose the BFI Archive as its official charity is extremely encouraging.” The Dilys Powell award for Excellence in Cinema will be announced in January. ==================================================== Pierce is British - who knew? Lucky though since there aren't any non British actor supporting categories like there are for lead. (seriously a quick look at the noms looks like Irish actors are included) 31st London Critics’ Circle nominationsSKY 3D AWARD: FILM OF THE YEAR Black Swan (Fox) The Kids Are All Right (Universal) The King’s Speech (Momentum) The Social Network (Sony) Toy Story 3 (Disney) DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan (Fox) Joel Coen & Ethan Coen – True Grit (Paramount) David Fincher – The Social Network (Sony) Christopher Nolan – Inception (Warner) Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (New Wave) THE ATTENBOROUGH AWARD: BRITISH FILM OF THE YEAR 127 Hours (Warner/Pathe) The Arbor (Verve) Another Year (Momentum) The King’s Speech (Momentum) Monsters (Vertigo) BRITISH DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR Clio Barnard – The Arbor (Verve) Danny Boyle – 127 Hours (Warner/Pathe) Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech (Momentum) Mike Leigh – Another Year (Momentum) Christopher Nolan – Inception (Warner) FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR Dogtooth (Verve) I Am Love (Metrodome) Of Gods and Men (Artificial Eye) The Secret in Their Eyes (Metrodome) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (New Wave) ACTOR OF THE YEAR sponsored by Narrabeen Communications Jeff Bridges – True Grit (Paramount) Jesse Eisenberg – The Social Network (Sony) Colin Firth – The King’s Speech (Momentum) Ryan Gosling – Blue Valentine (Optimum) Edgar Ramirez – Carlos (Optimum) MOËT ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Annette Bening – The Kids Are All Right (Universal) Jennifer Lawrence – Winter’s Bone (Artificial Eye) Natalie Portman – Black Swan (Fox) Noomi Rapace – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Momentum) Hailee Steinfeld – True Grit (Paramount) BRITISH ACTOR OF THE YEAR in association with Cameo Productions Riz Ahmed – Four Lions (Optimum) Christian Bale – The Fighter (Paramount/Momentum) Jim Broadbent – Another Year (Momentum) Colin Firth – The King’s Speech (Momentum) Andrew Garfield – Never Let Me Go (Fox) BRITISH ACTRESS OF THE YEAR Helena Bonham Carter – The King’s Speech (Momentum) Lesley Manville – Another Year (Momentum) Rosamund Pike – Barney’s Version (Universal) Ruth Sheen – Another Year (Momentum) Tilda Swinton – I Am Love (Metrodome) BRITISH ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLEDavid Bradley – Another Year (Momentum) Pierce Brosnan – The Ghost (Optimum)Andrew Garfield – The Social Network (Sony) Tom Hardy – Inception (Warner) Peter Wight – Another Year (Momentum) BRITISH ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLEHelena Bonham Carter – Alice in Wonderland (Disney) Christine Bottomley – The Arbor (Verve) Minnie Driver – Barney’s Version (Universal) Rosamund Pike – Made in Dagenham (Paramount) Olivia Williams – The Ghost (Optimum)YOUNG BRITISH PERFORMER OF THE YEAR Jessica Barden – Tamara Drewe (Momentum) Conor McCarron – NEDs (Entertainment One) Will Poulter – The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Fox) Saoirse Ronan – The Way Back (Entertainment One) Thomas Turgoose – The Scouting Book for Boys (Pathe) SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg – The Kids Are All Right (Universal) Joel Coen & Ethan Coen – True Grit (Paramount) Chris Morris, Sam Bain, Simon Blackwell & Jesse Armstrong – Four Lions (Optimum) David Seidler – The King’s Speech (Momentum) Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network (Sony) Virgin Atlantic BREAKTHROUGH BRITISH FILM-MAKER Banksy – Exit Through the Gift Shop (Revolver) Clio Barnard – The Arbor (Verve) J Blakeson – The Disappearance of Alice Creed (CinemaNX) Gareth Edwards – Monsters (Vertigo) Chris Morris – Four Lions (Optimum)
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Post by Ace on Dec 21, 2010 14:02:15 GMT -5
A shame that Charlotte Doyle filming was scuppered last year because of Morgan Freeman's accident. I'd have liked to see Pierce and Saorise in a film together. www.iftn.ie/actors/actorsnews/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4283577&tpl=archnews&force=1IFTN: Ronan & Brosnan Make Critics’ Circle Shortlist 21 Dec 2010 : The latest on Irish film / TV industry training Both Saoirse Ronan and Pierce Brosnan have received Critics’ Circle Film Award nominations. Pierce has been nominated in the category of British Actor in a Supporting Role for ‘The Ghost’ whilst Saoirse has been shortlisted in the category of Young British Performer of the Year for ‘The Way Back’. Though both actors are Irish, a note on the Critics’ Circle Film Awards website explains that the word ‘British’ in the title of the awards is simply to distinguish them from the general best actor/director/film awards. Irish citizens are eligible for these awards but the awards organisers are of the opinion that many Irish actors and directors work on what are technically British films. ”There is no intention to suggest that Irish talent is British should an Irish citizen be nominated in the "British" categories and all Irish nominees know this. It simply recognises the complex nature of film making, a collaborative affair often crossing national boundaries,”it concludes. Golden Globe nominee Pierce Brosnan has been shortlisted in the category of British Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in Roman Polanski’s thriller, ‘The Ghost’. His fellow nominees include David Bradley for ‘Another Year’; Andrew Garfield for ‘The Social Network’; Tom Hardy for ‘Inception’ and Peter Wight for ‘Another Year’. IFTA winner Saoirse Ronan is one of five nominees in the group of Young British Performer of the Year for her role in Peter Weir’s ‘The Way Back’. The other young performers shortlisted in the category include Jessica Barden for ‘Tamara Drewe’; Conor McCarron for ‘NEDs’; Will Poulter for ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ and Thomas Turgoose for ‘The Scouting Book for Boys’. The 31st Critics’ Circle Film Awards will be held for the first time at BFI Southbank on February 10th, to benefit the group’s new charity partner, the
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Post by Ace on Dec 21, 2010 18:40:12 GMT -5
www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-22/film/hoberman-best-movies-2010/2/Year in Film: Hoberman's Top 10 By J. Hoberman Wednesday, Dec 22 2010 My favorite movie of 2010 sneaks into town three days before the year ends: The Strange Case of Angelica is a strange case to be sure. Manoel de Oliveira’s latest last film, which includes the 101-year-old director’s first use of CGI in his debut dream sequence, is as funny and peculiar as its title promises. Putting his own eccentric spin on the myth of Orpheus, the last working filmmaker to have been born during the age of the nickelodeon offers a modest, ultimately sublime meditation on the photographic essence of the motion-picture medium, as glimpsed in the half-light of eternity. As seen through the glass darkly of the present moment, I’d say the past 12 months were notable for directorial comebacks: Veteran filmmakers Olivier Assayas, Roman Polanski, Claire Denis, and even the late Henri-Georges Clouzot provided first-rate returns to form. Indeed, had the rules of inclusion (or at least mine) not stipulated that a movie have three public screenings and be no older than six years, this 10 Best list would have been strengthened by two more comebacks, namely Raúl Ruiz’s Secrets of Lisbon, shown once during the New York Film Festival, and, in a hitherto unseen triumph, R.W. Fassbinder’s 1974 telefilm World on a Wire, which had its belated premiere run at the Museum of Modern Art. Angelic in Angelica Cinema Guild Angelic in Angelica And now, back to the future . . . 1. THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal Opens December 29 at the IFC Center 2. CARLOS Olivier Assayas, France Assayas puts it all together—historical reconstruction and globalizing enterprise, terror and terroir, plus sex, death, and rock’n’roll. Carlos is a total you-are-there immersion in the bizarre career of a ’70s terrorist and, as the equivalent of three feature-length movies, it arguably deserves three slots. 3. THE GHOST WRITER Roman Polanski, U.K. The Pianist had its moments, but Polanski hasn’t made a movie so sustained in the decades since The Tenant or even 1966’s Cul de Sac. In a way, this seemingly modest political thriller is almost their sequel. Shot in Germany (standing in for the wintry New England beach), impeccably directed, and edited under house arrest—with a beleaguered British prime minister played by ex–James Bond, Pierce Brosnan—The Ghost Writer is rich with subtext. 4. LEBANON Samuel Maoz, Israel As classic in its way as The Ghost Writer and even more overtly formalist, writer-director Maoz’s first feature is at once existential combat movie and political allegory. (It’s about this tank . . .) The personal investment is evident. Lebanon, which could just as easily be called “Israel,” is based on the writer-director’s experience of the 1982 war, as replayed in his head for nearly 30 years. 5. WHITE MATERIAL Claire Denis, France As a child of Africa, Denis also brings it back home with this convulsive, beautiful, terrifying work—Heart of Darkness by way of Apocalypse Now. The filmmaking is terrific, impressionist yet tactile, with the girlish figure of Isabelle Huppert caught up in the maelstrom of a post-colonial civil war, fiercely clinging to the remnants of her past. 6. HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT’S INFERNO Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea, France Clouzot’s Inferno is another sort of wreck—that of a movie or perhaps a psyche. The title has a double meaning: The celebrated, wildly obsessive Clouzot attempted to make the ultimate ’60s flick, Inferno, and came unhinged in the process. It’s hard to imagine that Clouzot’s finished film would be more evocative than this explication of its shards—or that Romy Schneider could ever give a more seductive performance than in these screen tests and outtakes. 7. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU Andrei Ujica, Romania Here is megalomania-made material. Romanian film-artist Ujica’s archival assemblage is a three-hour immersion in a totalitarian leader’s official reality. It’s a modern-day Ubu Roi, with dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s public image as fabricated by (and for) the tyrant himself. 8. THE JUCHE IDEA Jim Finn, U.S. American film artist Jim Finn’s deadpan faux-documentary account of image-making in North Korea complements The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu’s show-stopping Pyongyang sequence—a stadium filled with thousands of precision-drilled North Korean dancers creating an elaborate Romanian folk pageant for an audience of two (and the camera). Something other than ironic, the year’s prize whatzit is steeped in the pathos of political kitsch as well as the “Juche”—North Korea’s ideology of self-reliance—that DIY independent filmmaking requires. 9. GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH Damien Chazelle, U.S. Another example of Juche cinema, this mumblecore musical mashes up Shadows with A Woman Is a Woman (and a bit of Pickup on South Street) to create a no-budget, neo-new-wave musical love story, shot off-the-cuff on the streets of Boston. At once clumsy and deft, annoying and ecstatic, Chazelle’s debut feature is amateurish in the word’s original sense, suffused with the love of movies. 10. The last 40 minutes of INCEPTION Christopher Nolan, U.S. Pure cinema is where you find it: I caught this much-maligned behemoth as a civilian, about a month into its run. The first 90-something minutes were so nonsensical as to be unbearable, but then something kicked in—the special effect called “editing”! Since 70 minutes has always seemed the ideal length for a B movie, take in Inception’s finale with one or two of the equally sensational 3-D action sequences from Tron: Legacy. And here are a dozen runners-up, any of which on another day might have wound up in the bottom half of my list: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector (Vikram Jayanti, U.K.); Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman, U.S.); Green Zone (Paul Greengrass, U.S.); Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, U.S.); Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, France); Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, U.S.); The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet, France); Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, U.S.); Machete (Robert Rodriguez, U.S.); Ne change rien (Pedro Costa, Portugal); The Portuguese Nun (Eugene Green, Portugal); Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, U.S.).
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Post by Ace on Dec 21, 2010 19:09:30 GMT -5
www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-22/film/year-in-film/And the winner of the 11th annual Village Voice Film Critics’ Poll is . . . T he Ghost Writer, Black Swan, Greenberg, Bluebeard, Mother, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Enter the Void.
Just kidding. There’s only one movie of the moment: The Social Network.
Listed on 52 of 85 ballots cast (the largest percentage of any poll-topping movie since Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven won in 2002), David Fincher’s Birth of a Cyber Nation, directed from Aaron Sorkin’s script, took the Voice poll, just as it captured critics’ awards in New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. Old media acknowledges new. The last time a newly anointed Time “Person of the Year” like Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg got the simultaneous Hollywood treatment was back in 1943 (Joe Stalin, Mission to Moscow). Truly, 2010 was the year of the globalistic rogue—runner-up to the Zuckerberg story was Carlos, Olivier Assayas’s five-and-a-half-hour saga of the most notorious international terrorist of the 1970s, while Exit Through the Gift Shop by art-world mystery-man prankster Banksy handily won both Best Documentary (or “documentary”) and Best First Film. Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg defeated Édgar Ramírez’s Carlos for Best Actor (although in the real world, both their Google numbers combined—plus Banksy’s—are but a ridiculous fraction of the 131 million citations for global rogue Julian Assange, whose biopic is surely TK). The poll’s top three movies all but swept the table. Sorkin overwhelmingly won for Best Screenplay; Assayas edged Fincher for Best Director. Meanwhile, third-place Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s indie backwoods thriller, collected a pair of awards: Feisty teenager Jennifer Lawrence pirouetted past Black Swan’s Natalie Portman for Best Actress and John Hawkes out-blustered The Fighter’s Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor, although in the battle for Best Supporting (lowlife) Actress, Bone’s Dale Dickey lost to Animal Kingdom’s Jacki Weaver. The rest of the top 10 are a decidedly mixed bag: Roman Polanski’s absurdist political thriller The Ghost Writer finished fourth, followed by a couple of surprise foreign films, Maren Ade’s acerbic relationship comedy Everyone Else and Giorgos Lanthimos’s allegorical family drama Dogtooth. Darren Aronofsky’s madcap Black Swan came in seventh, just ahead of Alain Resnais’s even madder Wild Grass and Bong Joon-ho’s Hitchcockian murder mystery Mother, all followed by the year’s top grossing movie Toy Story 3. The poll has a few anomalies. Three critics named movies as the year’s best that figured on no one else’s ballots: Nicholas Winding Refn’s viking fest Valhalla Rising, the documentary The Tillman Story, and Rodrigo García’s adoption drama Mother and Child. But these are proudly declared individual statements. Movies are more generally a collective art and social phenomenon. As box-office receipts measure popularity, polls manifest consensus. What’s really fascinating is intensity of feeling. Each poll has a hidden story, revealing those movies that are not only liked but really liked or even passionately lurved. Carlos may have appeared on significantly fewer ballots than The Social Network, but it garnered more first-place votes and had a higher average score. To quantify this sort of intensity, we’ve derived a primitive algorithm (factoring a movie’s average score with the percentage of voters listing it first or second) known as the Passiondex™. Application of the Passiondex™ to movies listed by at least three critics yields a somewhat different crop of winners headed by the bleak, violent Red Riding Trilogy (#26). Substantially trailing that critical cult winner are Manoel de Oliveira’s blandly eccentric Strange Case of Angelica (#29); Carlos; Lee Chang-dong’s epic crime drama Secret Sunshine (#16); Todd Solondz’s dark comedy Life During Wartime (#34); Jessica Hausner’s deadpan religious satire Lourdes (#24); Miguel Gomes’s not-quite music doc Our Beloved Month of August (#20); Toy Story 3; and Dogtooth. (That Lourdes, Dogtooth, and Life During Wartime all received votes as the year’s worst film enhances their cult status.) Tied with Dogtooth, and just ahead of Greenberg (#18) on the pash list—The Social Network. www.villagevoice.com/filmpoll/ [for full lists] BEST FILM VOTES MENTIONS1. Social Network 314 52 2. Carlos 247 36 3. Winter's Bone 194 34 4. Ghost Writer 163 27 5. Everyone Else 143 26 6. Dogtooth 128 20 7. Black Swan 118 19 8. Wild Grass 115 18 9. Mother 115 21 10. Toy Story 3 109 17 DIRECTOR VOTES 1. Olivier Assayas, Carlos 13 2. David Fincher, The Social Network 11 3. Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan 6 4. Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer 5 5. Gaspar Noe, Enter the Void 5 SUPPORTING ACTOR VOTES MENTIONS1. John Hawkes, Winter's Bone 48 20 2. Christian Bale, The Fighter 36 16 3. Andrew Garfield, The Social Network 28 14 4. Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right 24 12 5. Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer 23 11 SUPPORTING ACTRESS VOTES MENTIONS1. Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom 44 21 2. Dale Dickey, Winter's Bone 26 11 3. Olivia Williams, The Ghost Writer 26 12 4. Greta Gerwig, Greenberg 24 9 5. Mila Kunis, Black Swan 19 8 ACTOR VOTES MENTIONSJesse Eisenberg, The Social Network 87 38 Edgar Ramirez, Carlos 68 31 Colin Firth, The King's Speech 29 14 Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine 22 12 Ronald Bronstein, Daddy Longlegs 21 10 Joaquin Phoenix, I'm Still Here 16 7 Jim Carrey, I Love You Phillip Morris 15 7 Andre Dussollier, Wild Grass 15 7 Tahar Rahim, A Prophet 13 8 Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island 12 5 11. Ewan McGregor, The Ghost Writer12 6 ... Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer 3 1 SCREENPLAY VOTES 1. Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network 25 2. Maren Ade, Everyone Else 5 3. Robert Harris and Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer 5 4. Todd Solondz, Life During Wartime 4 5. Olivier Assayas and Dan Franck, Carlos 4
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Post by Ace on Dec 21, 2010 19:11:53 GMT -5
So in the arguably three most prestigious mass critics polls Ghost Writer came in:
Film Comment: #4 IndieWire: #7 Village Voice: #4
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Post by Ace on Dec 22, 2010 15:23:17 GMT -5
www.movieline.com/2010/12/stephanie-zachareks-10-best-movies-of-2010.php?page=2Stephanie Zacharek’s 10 Best Movies of 2010There’s probably no good reason to read any movie critic’s Top 10 list, but lots of people — including myself — read them anyway. Let’s not be falsely modest about it: It’s an honor to be able to compile a list and to have a place, online or otherwise, to moor it. But everyone who cares about movies has his or her own private list, posted online or not, which may include some or all of the usual suspects in a given year (like The Social Network or The King’s Speech, pictures which lots of people, though not all people, seem to love) as well as a selection of fiercely protected personal favorites. It’s the personal favorites that I think are most important, because for most of us those choices suggest the ways movies can reach us in ways that go beyond our sense of whether movies are “good” or “bad” in some technical, pre-ordained sense. Sometimes those choices might make us seem silly to our friends (or to our audience). We have to drop our guard to include them in the first place; then we have to steel ourselves for the howls of derision that might follow. But why bother with movies at all if we’re only allowed to love from a list of approved, reasonable choices? I enjoy looking at other critics’ top-10 lists, but I almost always find the choices at the bottom — including “honorable mentions,” if a critic has included them — the most interesting. At the top of the list, the pressure is really on: I always start with the movie I simply loved best, and then deal with the inevitable criticism that it cannot possibly be the “best” movie out there in a given year. (The only way to “deal with” such criticism is to ignore it.) But the end of a critic’s, or a moviegoer’s, list is where the oddball magic really happens. The movies here are the stragglers, the drifters, the hobos that not all of society loves. These are movies that may have been kicked off the list, put back on and kicked off again — they don’t ask for easy membership in any club. These are movies that may have reached us in ways we can’t quite parse, even after we’ve spent hours or days thinking and/or writing about them. If all top-10 lists are subjective (and all are, no matter how pompous some critics may be in presenting their choices), the tail end of the average list is truly the untamed wilderness, the place for inexplicable passions, for wooliness, for massive quantities of “What the f—-itude?” And so, before I give you my list, I invite you to compile — and please post — your own, and please throw caution to the wind at the end. Because once moviegoing starts being more about caution than about love, we’re truly sunk. Somewhere There’s no other American filmmaker quite like Sofia Coppola: She has the most delicate touch of anyone working today, yet there’s fierceness in her precision. Somewhere appears to drift along: Stephen Dorff gives a marvelous, understated performance as a too-successful movie star who’s decamped into a world of bored stasis at the Chateau Marmont, only to be nudged out of it by a surprise visit from his preteen daughter, played by a fawnlike (and superb) Elle Fanning. Only at the end does it become clear how much feeling and fortitude Coppola has poured into every seemingly casual scene, every offhand moment. It takes nerves of steel to make a movie this unassuming, and this moving. The Ghost WriterRoman Polanski gave us one of the most beautifully crafted thrillers of the year, in which a writer (Ewan McGregor) is hired to polish up the memoirs of the former British prime minister (a cool-as-Italian-marble Pierce Brosnan), which turns out to be not exactly the safest job in the world. This wily, mischievous entertainment is put together like a piece of clockwork, with no silly editing or inane wriggly cameras. The basics are all you need — and yet, these days, more than you can usually hope for. The Social Network A movie that’s basically a bunch of young guys talking, when they’re not totally nerding out. How does it work so well? David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin give us not just a fictionalized version of the birth of Facebook, but a study of how being a misunderstood asshole can work both for and against you. The King’s Speech Colin Firth stars as the stuttering king-to-be, Albert, who overcomes his fear and faces his public by working with a self-styled speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush). The movie’s pleasures lie in its quiet but sharply observed details, and in the performances given by Firth, Rush and Helena Bonham Carter, as Albert’s concerned but cautious wife. She eases him toward boldness and confidence without ever wounding his masculine, kingly pride. And she wears some great hats. I Am Love Luca Guadagnino’s story of a repressed Italian society wife finding true love with a down-to-earth chef is both crazy (in the good way) and meticulously controlled (also in the good way). And it features Tilda Swinton in one of the finest performances of the year; she’s like a translucent butterfly, with long, long, human legs. Despicable Me and My Dog Tulip Yes, it’s cheating to cram two movies into one entry. But isn’t it grand to have too many good movies to list, rather than not enough? Here, two marvels of animation: Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud’s thoroughly disreputable and deeply pleasurable Despicable Me brings lots of casual naughtiness to the increasingly classy — too-classy — world of animation. And Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip is a near-perfect adaptation of what may be a perfect book, J.R. Ackerley’s memoir about the years he spent with his beloved pet Alsatian. My Dog Tulip is computer animation that has the look and warmth of old-fashioned hand-drawing; it’s the best of both worlds, proof that there’s no reason they can’t co-exist. Vincere Marco Bellocchio’s haunting feature about Mussolini’s mistress, Ida Dalser, is epic filmmaking done on a relative shoestring. This is a grand, melodramatic sweep of a movie, and it features another of the year’s great female performances: That of Giovanna Mezzogiornio as the ill-fated Ida. Her eyes seem larger than life; so does her suffering. sz_top10_carlos.jpgCarlos Olivier Assayas’ five-and-a-half-hour portrait of Carlos the Jackal — starring a regally foxy Édgar Ramírez — follows the nation-hopping (and bed-hopping) trail of the international celebuterrorist without ever condoning his less-than-moral acts. The thing moves like a shot, though it’s also available in a surprisingly satisfying two-and-a-half-hour version. Vengeance The brilliant Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To spins a tale of principled hit men and the aging restaurateur — played superbly by French pop star Johnny Hallyday — who hires them to avenge the death of his daughter and his grandchildren. The movie’s violence is brutal, but so beautifully staged that you can hardly take your eyes off it. There’s more, and better, ballet here than in Black Swan. The American and The Tourist Two examples of mainstream thrillers — although the latter is more of a caper — that attempted to give audiences something beyond choppy editing and incoherent action sequences. The first was greeted warmly by audiences and some critics. The second was met with a resounding “What the heck?” Anton Corbijn’s The American looks and feels like a movie made by a filmmaker who hasn’t been to the movies since the ’70s — and I mean that as the highest compliment. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Tourist — clearly modeled on sprightly ’60s espionage romances like Charade — met with more open hostility from critics than any movie I can recall in recent years. I can certainly see viewing it as a failed experiment (though I don’t happen to share that view), or being disappointed by it, or simply not having a good time. But those who saw it as a major crime de cinema should get out more. Movies aren’t lumps carved out of gold or wood or lead. They’re mechanisms with many moving parts, each intended to strike a mood or set a tone or in some big or small way pull one of the many, many levers in our equally complicated brains. How a DP frames scenery we’ve seen, or think we’ve seen, 100 times, the knowledge that the actors are in on a movie’s jokes, the fact that a costume designer has taken care with all sorts of small but crucial details: There are almost too many things to be open to in movies. When it comes to The Tourist, I’m baffled that more critics didn’t see, for instance, the wit in the idea of a woman boarding a train for another country with only a tiny clutch bag, to find upon her arrival that her absentee lover has filled the closet of her luxury hotel room with evening gowns and jewels. (I’m hoping no one thought that was supposed to be realistic. If this is your idea of realism, I have only two words: Call me!) Few movies this year gave me the kind of light, glancing pleasure I got from The Tourist. If only all experiments could “fail” so grandly. Honorable Mentions: Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, Mia Hansen-Løve’s The Father of My Children, Sngmoo Lee’s The Warrior’s Way, Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us, Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give, Neil Jordan’s Ondine, Matt Reeves’ Let Me In, Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, John Wells’ The Company Men, Marshall Curry’s Racing Dreams, Tony Scott’s Unstoppable, Vincenzo Natali’s Splice and Bartosz Konopka’s Rabbit a la Berlin.
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Post by Ace on Dec 24, 2010 14:40:30 GMT -5
www.filmdeculte.com/cinema/actualite/PRIX-LUMIERE-2011-les-nominations-11634.htmlPRIX LUMIERE 2011: les nominationsLes Prix Lumière de la critique internationale sont attribués chaque année aux meilleurs films du cinéma français (ou francophone) par l’Académie Lumière réunissant plus de 200 représentants de la presse internationale en poste à Paris. Une sorte d'équivalent français des Golden Globes. Découvrez les nominés ci-dessous. [Les Prix Lumière: International critics annual award to the best films of French cinema with over 200 representatives of the international media based in Paris. A sort of French equivalent of the Golden Globes. Find out the nominees below.] MEILLEUR FILM [Best Film] Carlos d’Olivier Assayas Des hommes et des dieux de Xavier Beauvois Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) de Joann Sfar The Ghost Writer de Roman PolanskiL’Illusionniste de Sylvain Chomet MEILLEUR REALISATEUR [Best Director] Mathieu Amalric pour Tournée Olivier Assayas pour Carlos Xavier Beauvois pour Des hommes et des dieux Roman Polanski pour The Ghost WriterJoann Sfar pour Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) MEILLEUR SCENARIO [Best Screenplay] Julie Bertuccelli pour L’Arbre Olivier Lorelle, Rachid Bouchareb pour Hors-la-loi Robert Harris, Roman Polanski pour The Ghost WriterMichel Leclerc, Baya Kasmi pour Le Nom des gens Géraldine Nakache, Hervé Mimran pour Tout ce qui brille MEILLEURE ACTRICE Juliette Binoche pour Copie conforme d’Abbas Kiarostami Isabelle Carré pour Les Emotifs anonymes de Jean-Pierre Améris Catherine Deneuve pour Potiche de François Ozon Ludivine Sagnier pour Pieds nus sur les limaces de Fabienne Berthaud Kristin Scott Thomas pour Elle s’appelait Sarah de Gilles Paquet-Brenner MEILLEUR ACTEUR Romain Duris pour L’Arnacoeur de Pascal Chaumeil et L’Homme qui voulait vivre sa vie d’Eric Lartigau Eric Elmosnino pour Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) de Joann Sfar Michael Lonsdale pour Des hommes et des dieux de Xavier Beauvois Édgar Ramírez pour Carlos de Olivier Assayas Lambert Wilson pour Des Hommes et des Dieux de Xavier Beauvois et La Princesse de Montpensier de Bertrand Tavernier MEILLEUR ESPOIR FEMININ Lolita Chammah pour Copacabana de Marc Fitoussi Linda Doudaeva pour Les Mains en l’air de Romain Goupil Marie Féret pour Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart de René Féret Nina Rodriguez pour No et moi de Zabou Breitman Yahima Torres pour Vénus Noire d’Abdellatif Kechiche MEILLEUR ESPOIR MASCULIN Emile Berling pour Le Bruit des glaçons de Bertrand Blier Nahuel Perez Biscayart pour Au fond des bois de Benoît Jacquot Antonin Chalon pour No et moi de Zabou Breitman Jules Pelissier pour Simon Werner a disparu de Fabrice Gobert Aymen Saïdi pour Dernier étage, gauche, gauche d’Angelo Clanci MEILLEUR FILM FRANCOPHONE (hors France) Amer d’Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani (Belgique, France) Les Amours imaginaires de Xavier Dolan (Québec) Un Homme qui crie de Mahamat Saleh Haroun (France, Belgique, Tchad) Illégal d’Olivier Masset-Depasse (Belgique, Luxembourg, France) Orly d’Angela Schanelec (Allemagne, France)
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Post by Ace on Dec 30, 2010 10:14:16 GMT -5
www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/greatest_film_scenes_of_2010/index.html?story=/ent/movies/film_salon/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_introSALON: Best Film Scenes of 2010Thursday, Dec 30, 2010 09:01 ET The best scenes of 2010 Let's hit rewind! A much closer look at the year's most stirring cinema moments By Matt Zoller Seitz Despite the definitive, down-from-the-mountaintop title of this series -- the Best Scenes of 2010 -- the group of 10 video essays we're unfolding over the next day is less about list-making than exploration. It's an opportunity -- an excuse, really -- to zero in on the DNA of movies: the shots and cuts, lines of dialogue and music cues that illustrate a film's personality and sum up its style, themes and sense of life. We're launching with the last three in the series, and we'll keeping rolling out more entries till we hit No. 1 on Friday afternoon. The scenes run the gamut in terms of genre, budget and storytelling mode. There are a spectacular action sequence, grueling suspense scenes, two dreams, a mortifying display of family dysfunction and a couple of intimate moments so dependent on pop songs that they could double as stand-alone music videos. The most popular movie on this list cost $200 million to produce and has already grossed a half-billion worldwide. The smallest cost less than a used car and was such a labor of love that it didn't open in U.S. theaters until five years after its completion. Taken together, these 10 scenes give a sense of the dazzling range of movie year 2010 and illustrate the idea that there is no single, irrefutably "correct" way to make a good movie. It's all about the material and what the artists do with it; in other words, alchemy. We can parse the result, but only up to a point. Casual moviegoers should be warned that because this series is more about form than content, we're not concerned with protecting virgin eyeballs. At least two of the scenes are taken from the very end of plot-driven films. Most of the rest showcase pivotal moments in the lives of their characters. Spoiler alerts have been affixed to a couple of the videos, but readers are strongly encouraged to read the articles and the title cards leading up to each scene, and decide how much they value plot before going further. www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/12/30/scenes_2010_ghost_writer[check link for video] 9. "The Ghost Writer" Roman Polanski's thrilling economy turns the film's final sequence into nearly perfect entertainment Video By Matt Zoller Seitz Roman Polanski is an economical director, and "The Ghost Writer" is one of his most economical films. This story of an unnamed man (Ewan McGregor) hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) never makes a move without reason and never holds a shot -- or pauses after a line -- a millisecond longer than it needs to. You can see it in the scene we're examining here: The film's widely celebrated ending, which wraps up two hours' worth of plot in just four shots. "The Ghost Writer" is an example of a vanishing type of film direction rooted in the values of classical (pre-TV) Hollywood. Although Polanski didn't make his first feature until 1962 ("A Knife in the Water"), he has done most of his work in that tradition. The subject matter of his movies is often disturbing -- jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil -- but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn't cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn't cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is. Polanski's screenwriting sensibility is just as exact -- a point vividly demonstrated on "The Ghost Writer," which Polanski co-adapted with Robert Harris, from Harris' novel. The filmmaker doles out words the way he doles out shots: sparingly, never giving the viewers more than is necessary to keep them on the hook and waiting for the next revelation. This is a nearly perfect entertainment, never more so than in its final few minutes.
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Post by Ace on Jan 2, 2011 12:38:05 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/movies/awardsseason/20110102-oscarpicks-feature.htmlScott, Darghis & Hunter from the NY Times give their Oscar choices (not predictions and some nominations aren't eligible) Darghis has Ghost Writer as a Best Picture nominee. Darghis & Scott have Pierce for Best Supporting Actor. (what no nom by Hunter - I am shocked! ) Darghis has Olivia for Best Supporting Actress. Darghis & Scott have Ghost Writer as a Best Adapted Screenplay nominee.
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Post by Ace on Jan 2, 2011 12:43:22 GMT -5
scottfeinberg.com/deepvote9Wednesday, December 29, 2010 “DEEP VOTE” ON “THE GHOST WRITER,” “THE KING’S SPEECH,” AND “THE TOWN” [Ninth column - see link for previous] “Deep Vote,” an Oscar winning screenwriter and a member of the Academy, will write this column — exclusively for ScottFeinberg.com — every week until the Academy Awards. He will help to peel back the curtain on the Oscar voting process by sharing his thoughts about the films he sees and, ultimately, his nomination and final ballots, as well. His identity must be protected in order to spare him from repercussions for disclosing the aforementioned information. * * * “The Ghost Writer” is a movie for grown-ups, done with a polish and sophistication that stops to explain nothing, and keeps the tension one step ahead of the viewer’s imagination, until an ending that comes so quickly and shockingly that the picture is over before one realizes it is just right — and that one has seen what is probably the best picture of the year.The film was released early in the year and has been neglected, and the events to which it refers have faded from people’s memories with astonishing rapidity, so I find myself concerned that many in the audience will not know that British Prime Minister Tony Blair aided American President George W. Bush by arresting and diverting presumed hostiles to countries where they were tortured, and, before that, backed Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (and, for a time, Secretary of State Colin Powell) in various lies that maneuvered the United States into its disastrous war in Iraq. These facts have been substantiated by the “Downing Street Memo,” among other documents, but the press in the U.S. has not kept the controversy alive, as it still is in the U.K., and President Barack Obama killed the prospect of an investigation as to how the two countries locked arms to stumble into this long-term disaster from which we still have not extricated ourselves. Sorry for the political explication, but unless one knows these elemental facts, one will have a hard time following “The Ghost Writer,” wherein a professional ghostwriter — the kind of pro who writes books, credited or uncredited, for nearly every celebrity who needs one, including those who tell stories about how “I had to write this myself” — is hired for a huge fee to rush to a compound on Martha’s Vineyard to finish the memoirs of the ex-Prime Minister of Britain, whose former ghostwriter fell off a ferry and tragically drowned. Roman Polanski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Harris (from Harris’s book of the same name) and directed the film himself, expertly conveys the tension and total control within the compound, set off on a long country road, accessible only through a guarded check-point, but besieged at times by angry demonstrators. The P.M. himself is, at this very time (and on every channel), the subject of indictment by an International War Crimes Tribunal, so he cannot return to Britain. It is essential that his book come out so the world will see what a decent guy he is. But the ghostwriter finds the content of the first draft commonplace and dull, and the P.M. frighteningly obtuse, distracted and intimidating. Nevertheless, the ghostwriter begins his own investigation of the beach where his predecessor washed up, and, ultimately, of the trip he took to the mainland to visit a Harvard professor who turns out to be secretly connected with the C.I.A. The ferry is the only way most people come to the Vineyard, but the P.M. arrives by helicopter, and his arrival creates havoc. Pierce Brosnan deserves the best supporting actor Oscar for the way he manages to portray a man showing calm and control while inwardly hysterical. He is so wildly into his self-absorbed role that he begins to look more like Tony Blair than Pierce Brosnan — Tony Blair about to explode but fighting it off, and taking an enormous toll on everyone around him.
Ewan McGregor, as the ghostwriter, is so understated that one only gradually realizes how much one is worried about him as he begins to discover more and more about his predecessor’s death, and discovers evidence his predecessor has carefully hidden in the guarded room from which the manuscript cannot be removed, and, finally, the clues in the manuscript itself. It is impossible to convey the rapid events which sweep the ghostwriter over the edge of events far more imposing than himself, or the means by which every twist and turn is loaded with sinister possibilities. It’s a bit like “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), except without the supernatural. Suffice it to say that Polanski and Harris deserve the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, and Polanski, if nominated, will have my vote for best director. The movie suggests that terrible international events are controlled by a small cabal of men acting independently of constitutional restraints and elected authority. In that sense, it is paranoid. On the other hand, there’s the history of our involvement in Iraq, of which we may never know the whole. A director expert in the paranoid is a necessity to capture this kind of history, and I hope Polanski has not given us his final film in which politics is reflected through the glass of hysteria and danger and suspense. One might compare it to the movie about the Valerie Plame outing. It refers to related crimes, but it makes a totally different set of decisions about how to handle them, and delivers to the informed viewer something of what it must feel like to pursue the truth, knowing that the wolf is on one’s heels, and might come down the street at any time in a car one never sees. * * *
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Post by Ace on Jan 2, 2011 13:40:46 GMT -5
Variety: For critics, 2010's best films revel in the details (12-31-10)Ghost Writer' get small touches just right By Justin Chang 2010 films fly or falter amid screen convergence Getting film critics to agree on anything is a tall order, and thus the overwhelming year-end consensus in favor of "The Social Network," echoing last year's across-the-board acclaim for "The Hurt Locker," is fairly remarkable. Perhaps too remarkable: Given the dominance of David Fincher's justly celebrated drama -- it's won almost every best picture award and topped almost every poll in sight -- a degree of media backlash against the film would seem the logical next step. Still, of all the darts hurled at the David Fincher-directed film (It's sexist! It's glib! It's about a bunch of jerks who don't change!), the most pointed observation I've heard came not from a member of the press but from my sister. She opined that the film, in tracing Mark Zuckerberg's meteoric rise from geek to giant, omitted an essential component: the tremendous technical expertise that must have gone into creating Facebook. It should be noted that my sister is an IT consultant with a formidable computer science background (and no Facebook account), and is thus among the handful of moviegoers who could be transfixed by entire sequences devoted to lines and lines of code zipping across the screen. Yet as a relative Luddite, and an ardent admirer of Fincher's film, even I wanted a higher level of HTML proficiency from "Social Network," which features only brief glimpses of Facebook pages and generally depicts the act of programming as a drinking-game diversion, a project that Zuckerberg worked on in his free time -- rather than a white-hot creative urge that drove the entire project, far more than lust or lucre, from day one. God is in the details, and part of me hoped Fincher would geek out as obsessively as he did in "Zodiac," his meticulous re-creation of the decade-spanning investigation of the Bay Area murders. That's a film that fully immerses you in its subject, even to the point of risking boredom. And it's precisely that willingness to risk -- to focus on nuts and bolts without pandering to the viewer's attention span -- that elevates it, in my mind, to the rarefied realm of great movie art. The obvious rebuttal is that "Social Network" isn't really about Facebook, but rather a timeless illustration of how, even in the wake of a game-changing Internet phenomenon, social barriers stemming from differences in class, gender, ethnicity, perceived intelligence and sex appeal remain more clearly demarcated than ever. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In refusing to dramatize, or play into, Facebook's allure, Fincher and scribe Aaron Sorkin have arguably taken a principled stance: They've made a defiantly analog movie about a digital revolution. They've sacrificed a measure of the specific to capture the universal. In this respect, they are hardly alone. Many of the year's other memorable releases use visual shorthand to describe the mechanics of a complex process. You learn something about the art of ballet in "Black Swan," the sport of boxing in "The Fighter" and the practice of therapy in "The King's Speech," but the representations of these difficult human endeavors are ultimately subjugated to the conventional satisfactions of storytelling. This is less a criticism than an observation -- an acknowledgment of the necessary balance these films strike between enlightenment and entertainment, without compromising either too severely. David O. Russell's "The Fighter" falls back on the time-honored syntax of the boxing picture: training montages and round-by-round fight coverage pegged to an uplifting underdog saga. The canon of boxing movies is an estimable one, and Russell shoots his fairly conventionally, as though aware of the futility of trying to compete with, say, "Raging Bull." If anything, he's liberated by it -- free to make "The Fighter" a darkly comic performance piece that's far more rousing, loose-limbed and unpredictable outside the ring. The ballet-movie pantheon is considerably smaller, and "Black Swan" surely deserves a place for the verve and beauty of its rehearsal and performance sequences, shot in a muscular handheld style that captures the raw athleticism behind the most delicate gestures. Darren Aronofsky's filmmaking is keenly attuned to minutiae; the mere act of putting on ballet shoes is depicted as a task requiring incredible patience. And yet, each of the three times I've seen "Black Swan," I wanted that third act to go on longer, even at the risk of losing some momentum -- not only to prolong the thrill of Natalie Portman's transformation, but to allow us to savor the pleasures of "Swan Lake" itself. Roman Polanski's devious thriller "The Ghost Writer," meanwhile, is all about the details. The film might appear overly simplistic; the act of ghost writing is dispensed within a single edit, as the film cuts from a deadline-stressed Ewan McGregor to a shot of book jackets being printed. But in far more significant ways, its steady, patient accretion of clues is precisely what allows its atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia to build so implacably, in a manner sadly out of fashion among most contemporary suspensers. For that matter, I wish there were more films as patient as Anton Corbijn's underrated "The American," with its wordless, beautifully observed passages of George Clooney quietly assembling a sniper rifle (and telling us almost nothing about how he intends to use it). For me, at least two 2010 releases were distinguished by their extreme devotion to process, to the point where the process becomes the movie. Olivier Assayas' "Carlos" offers not just a biographical portrait of a notorious criminal, but an astounding history of international terrorism in the '70s and '80s -- a project so ambitious and intricate that Assayas required 5 1/2 hours to do it justice. Crammed with dates and incidents, skipping across multiple continents, handily juggling nearly a dozen languages, yet always moving propulsively forward, "Carlos" adopts a maximalist procedural approach. Crucially, this panoramic view captures psychology along with action, the big picture along with the small. (Not coincidentally, Assayas has cited "Zodiac" as a key influence.) And finally, given my predilection for nuts and bolts, it was perhaps inevitable that I'd fall for one of the year's more critically divisive pictures, "Inception." Some carped that Christopher Nolan's mind-bender sacrificed some character depth and emotional immediacy, and it never stops explaining itself, never stops establishing rules within rules. But such intricate gamesmanship is one of the great underappreciated pleasures of the movies, and "Inception" creates a dreamscape that's eminently worth expounding on. The dialogue may not sizzle like Sorkin's, but whereas Fincher made a movie about geeks, Nolan made a movie for them: Call it "The Subconscious Network."
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Post by Ace on Jan 2, 2011 13:43:45 GMT -5
San Francisco Chronicle: Oscar contenders: familiar rivalries, fresh faces (12-31-10)Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Movie Correspondent San Francisco Chronicle January 2, 2011 Don't expect any surprises when the Academy Award nominations are revealed at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 25. There's no "Million Dollar Baby" or "Slumdog Millionaire" in the wings poised to eliminate an almost certain best picture nominee. Nor has any dark horse emerged to shake up the acting competition the way Jeff Bridges did last year with "Crazy Heart." But that doesn't mean the Oscar race won't be spirited. It promises to resurrect some old-fashioned rivalries, pitting mature actors against younger ones - Annette Bening against Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams and possibly Hilary Swank, who already beat Bening twice. "The Social Network," a movie very much of its time about the conception of Facebook, will face "The King's Speech," the steeped-in-history story of King George VI's struggle with a stammer. The final slate of nominees will depend on academy voters' willingness to sift through small indies like "Winter's Bone" and "Blue Valentine" and the Australian gangster picture "Animal Kingdom" and rate them as equals to major Hollywood productions with 10 times the budget. Here is how the Oscar race is stacking up heading into the final stretch. (Percentage is chance at nomination.) Best pictureIt's stretching it to get to 10 nominees in what has been far from a stellar year for movies. "The Social Network" (90 percent) For a movie that has been the front-runner since the beginning, it has engendered surprisingly little backlash. "Inception" (80 percent) One reason for doubling the number of Oscar nominees was because "The Dark Knight" got overlooked. So it's an act of retribution that another cerebral blockbuster from the same director (Christopher Nolan) make the cut this time. "Toy Story 3" (70 percent) Perfectly realized, superb animation- but does it need more accolades when it's sure to win for best animated feature? "The King's Speech" (70 percent) Anglophiles aren't the only ones to go gaga over this historical saga. Almost every review brings up its Oscar potential. "Black Swan" (60 percent) Like the rest of us, academy members will have a hard time getting this bizarre ballet story of ambition run wild out of their mind. "The Kids Are All Right" (60 percent) This family drama about a lesbian couple proved to be a "Father Knows Best" for the 21st century, becoming one of the year's only indies to reach a sizable audience. "The Fighter" (50 percent) A cliched story of a boxer on the rise is distinguished by incredible performances. "The Ghost Writer" (30 percent) Roman Polanski's crisp direction gives this political thriller its edge. But will voters remember a movie that came out in February?"True Grit" (30 percent) Atmospheric with breathtaking cinematography, the Coen brothers' latest may be hampered by a feeling that this movie didn't need to be remade. The 10th Slot: "127 Hours," "The Town" or - a real long shot- "The Way Back." Best supporting actorTo avoid Firth and Geoffrey Rush competing against each other for "The King's Speech," the studio positioned Rush, who is as much the lead as his co-star, in this secondary category. That lands Rush up against of bunch of Hollywood's young turks. Geoffrey Rush ("The King's Speech," 95 percent) The winner of an Oscar, Tony and Emmy, he might think of clearing some space off his trophy wall. Christian Bale ("The Fighter," 80 percent) This go-for-broke actor has put on and dropped so much weight it's hard to get a fix on what he really looks like. He goes all gaunt to play a drug-addicted, over-the-hill fighter. Justin Timberlake ("The Social Network," 50 percent) Playing the bad-boy founder of Napster, he stood out in a very able cast. It's another example of how smart this star has been transitioning from music to movies. Pierce Brosnan ("The Ghost Writer," 20 percent) He gives the performance of his career as a Tony Blair-like prime minister, making you forget that 007 guy.The Fifth Slot: Mark Ruffalo as a happy-go-lucky sperm donor in "The Kids Are All Right," hometown boy Sam Rockwell in "Conviction," Matt Damon in "True Grit," Andrew Garfield as another smarty-pants kid in "The Social Network," Sean Penn in "Fair Game," and Douglas for reprising his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
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Post by Lauryn on Jan 2, 2011 18:09:21 GMT -5
Go Pierce! Go Olivia! You and Claude Rains, LOL! Hunter overcompensates too much to be in Pierce's fan club. Doesn't he drive a Hummer? <wink> Pardon me, that's "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stephen Hunter." I think he has that phraseology permanently grafted onto his name. Odd for a critic who wants so badly to be a yahoo, rather than a clubby elite, but there you go.
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Post by Ace on Jan 4, 2011 16:36:47 GMT -5
Only Brits are eligible hence no GW as Best Picture (even though it was partially funded by the UK it wasn't directed by a Brit) and probably why no PB, though his role was supporting and most noms seem to be for leads)
London Evening Standard Awards nominees
BEST FILM Another Year (director Mike Leigh) The Arbor (director Clio Barnard) The Illusionist (director Sylvain Chomet) Kick-Ass (director Matthew Vaughn) The King’s Speech (director Tom Hooper) Neds (director Peter Mullan) Never Let Me Go (director Mark Romanek)
BEST ACTOR Riz Ahmed (Four Lions) Jim Broadbent (Another Year) Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, Never Let Me Go) Eddie Marsan (The Disappearance Of Alice Creed) Ewan McGregor (The Ghost) Sam Riley (Brighton Rock)
BEST ACTRESS Brenda Blethyn (London River) Rebecca Hall (Please Give) Sally Hawkins (Made In Dagenham) Keira Knightley (Never Let Me Go) Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go) Kristin Scott Thomas (Partir) Ruth Sheen (Another Year) Tilda Swinton (I Am Love) Olivia Williams (The Ghost)
BEST SCREENPLAY Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy (127 Hours) Ben Wheatley and Robin Hill (Down Terrace) Robert Harris (The Ghost) Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) Clio Barnard (The Arbor) Alex Garland (Never Let Me Go)
LONDON FILM MUSEUM TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Gareth Edwards for his cinematography, production design and visual effects on Monsters Jenny Beavan for her costume design for The King’s Speech Dick Pope for his cinematography on Another Year Andrew McAlpine for his production design for Made In Dagenham Dickon Hinchliffe for his score for Winter’s Bone Mark Tildesley for his production design for The Killer Inside Me
PETER SELLERS AWARD FOR COMEDY Roger Allam for his performance in Tamara Drewe Omid Djalili for his performance in The Infidel Ed Gaughan for his performance in Skeletons Robin Hill for his performance in Down Terrace David Thewlis for his performance in London Boulevard
MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER J Blakeson writer/director of The Disappearance Of Alice Creed Tuppence Middleton (for her performances in Skeletons and Chatroom) Nick Whitfield, director of Skeletons Ben Wheatley, co-writer and director of Down Terrace Conor McCarron for his performance in Neds
BEST DOCUMENTARY A Day In The Life by John Krish Oil City Confidential by Julien Temple Enemies Of The People by Thet Sambat and Rob Lemkin Exit Through The Gift Shop by Banksy Land Of The Free by Vadim Jean No Greater Love by Michael Whyte
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Post by Ace on Jan 5, 2011 22:06:22 GMT -5
Ghost Writer criminally doesn't get a nom from the Art Director's Guild - even with a split field. Pffft. Film Experience ContemporaryTherese DePrez for BLACK SWAN Donald Graham Burt for THE SOCIAL NETWORK Judy Becker for THE FIGHTER Sharon Seymour for THE TOWN Suttirat Larlarb for 127 HOURS Disappointed to see Albrecht Konrad's work on THE GHOST WRITER left off the contemporary list. That film is a perfect example of how crucial art direction can be for a movie. So many of those scenes just bounce off the walls of that coldly enticing house with all the sharp angles. Everything feels both rich and sinister. Plus that little hotel room Ewan stays in? Perfection. But 'Social Network,' 'Ghost Writer' Land Scripter NominationsPublished: January 05, 2011 @ 5:36 pm By Steve Pond The Scripter Awards, a juried award created by USC Libraries to honor film adaptations of literary works, has nominated "The Ghost Writer," "127 Hours," "The Social Network," "True Grit" and "Winter's Bone" for its 2010 honor. The GhostThe award honors both the screenwriter and the author of the original work. Although in recent years the field has been expanded to allow adaptations of newspaper and magazine articles, comic books and other screenplays, this year's lineup consists entirely of book adaptations, three from novels and two from non-fiction works. Aaron Sorkin and Ben Mezrich have to be considered frontrunners for "The Social Network." Last year's winner, "Up in the Air," was upset at the Oscars by another Scripter nominee, "Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire." Other films in contention for the 2010 award included "Shutter Island, "Rabbit Hole," "Never Let Me Go," "Barney's Version" and "The Way Back." The selection committee consists of nearly 60 filmmakers, writers, actors, journalists and academics, including Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Ed Harris, Lawrence Kasdan, Callie Khouri, Peter Sarsgaard, Kenneth Turan and Steven Zaillian. The winner will be announced at the Scripter Awards ceremony on February 4. The nominees: “The Ghost Writer” Roman Polanski, screenwriter [should also be Harris] Robert Harris, author (novel, “The Ghost”) “127 Hours” Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, screenwriters Aron Ralston, author (book, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”) “The Social Network” Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter Ben Mezrich, author (book, “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”) “True Grit” Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, screenwriters Charles Portis, author (novel, “True Grit”) “Winter’s Bone” Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini, screenwriters Daniel Woodrell, author (novel, “Winter’s Bone”)
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