Looking for Sanctuary

Hi Kids, it's your host Nathaniel. I'm subbing for much hipper gay Manuel who has been doing a great job recapping "Looking" this season all while preparing to defend his thesis -- Overachiever! Meanwhile I've watched from the sidelines desperately worried about this shows possible cancellation. Whereas I had a pure simple crush on the show in Season 1, now in Season 2 I'm basically admitting full thorny adult love. Which worries me. Happy endings aren't really this show's strong suit. And I don't mean that euphemistically... unless you count that time that it got in Augustin's eye. OUCH!

"Looking for Sanctuary" after the jump...

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Beauty vs Beast: Making Beastly Music Together

Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast," wherein we ask you to pick a side either side in one of cinema's many morality plays. It's the birthday of one of our greatest living actresses - Isabelle Huppert is turning 62 today! And talk about still going strong. She's pounding out some of her most exciting and dangerous-as-ever work ever these days; last year's Abuse of Weakness from Catherine Breillat made me weak in the knees. And the project she's in the middle of filming right now, a rape-revenge thriller from Danish provocateur Paul Verhoeven... well even just writing those words in that sequence makes me break out in a hot sweat of expectations.

So today in her honor we look back at perhaps her greatest achievement to date, Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. Which - usefully for this exercise - is also giving us one of the hardest-to-root-for lead characters ever put on screen. Not that Benoit Magimel's aggresively manicured Walter is anybody's idea of a saint... Haneke's not going to make this easy for anybody. (Understatement of the century.)

Whose team are you on?

Team Walter

Team Erika

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PREVIOUSLY We made like Buffy for her 18th anniversary and got our vampire boyfriends on - but who slayed? It was the peroxide punk who saved the day - Spike too about 53% of the vote in what was unsurprisingly a close battle. It's been raging for eighteen years, after all! Said JS:

"Spike still takes every and all cakes."

We Can't Wait #5: The Lobster

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Teo Bugbee...

Who & What: The Lobster is the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, writer-director of Dogtooth. It's his first film in English, and his cast is an exciting hodgepodge of both art house and multiplex stars, including Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, Léa Seydoux, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Olivia Colman, Ariane Labed, and Angeliki Papoulia.
As for what they'll be doing, it's all very hush hush, but what we know is that The Lobster is set in a dystopian future where all the single people are rounded up and brought to a hotel, where they are given 45 days to find their mate, or else they are turned into animals and released into the woods.

Why We're Excited About it: Lanthimos' Dogtooth is one of the best movies of the last decade. It's so weird and it's so fun and it's so specific about the kind of cinema that it wants to be—no matter what, we should be excited for what else he has up his sleeve. But that cast! That amazing tease of a plot description! The fact that all the characters have crazy names like Loner Leader and Limping Man and Biscuit Woman! And to be honest, it's more than a little encouraging that Sony has stepped onboard so soon as the film's international distributor, even if US rights are still up in the air. Rare for an art film to be afforded that kind of confidence before a premiere, and it's only making the anticipation greater.

What if it all Goes Wrong? Well, what if indeed? Does it matter if this movie is good or bad at all so long as it fuels the artistic energy of its collaborators? Lanthimos's last film Alps was not particularly well received, but it's always nice to know that there are artists in this industry who are still able to get their films made. It's not hard to imagine The Lobster being bad—if it is, it'll probably be because there are too many elements and too many ideas that aren't being corralled together. But even if it isn't the great film we're hoping for, it's almost impossible to imagine a version of this movie that wouldn't be worth seeing, and that's exciting in its own right.

When: No word on this yet, as the film has yet to premiere or pick up a US distributor. But considering it finished production last year, and considering Lanthimos's friendly relationship with the Cannes Film Festival, it seems likely it will appear there this May.

previously...

Run All Night and the Liam Neeson Ass-Kicking Hierarchy

Michael C. here.  It has been over six years since Liam Neeson reinvented as filmdom’s reigning action hero by making “I will find you, and I will kill you” sound less like a threat and more like a statement of simple fact. Since then, a sort of unofficial franchise has formed around the concept of Neeson as a grim dispenser of violence. This series, not including would-be franchises launches like Battleship and The A-Team, breaks down into three distinct groups. They are:

• Pure, unadulterated schlock. Only the faintest trace of plot or character. Just Neeson methodically throat-punching his way through an unending supply of sleazy Euro-Villains bent on doing unspeakable things to his loved ones: Taken 1, 2, 3
• Still schlock, but with bonus bells and whistles. Supporting characters, a high concept premise, and a plot of rapidly escalating absurdity. Slightly less throat punching than the Taken films, but still a lot of throat punching: Unknown, Non-Stop
• Actual films of substance smuggled into theaters. Under the guise of another Neeson schlock-fest, naturally. Little to no throat punching. Occasional implied wolf punching: The Grey, A Walk Among the Tombstones

For a while it looks like the latest entry in this series, Jaume Collet-Serra’s currently underperforming Run All Night, is poised to join Grey and Tombstones in that elite third group...

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Film Bitch Awards... Openings, Endings, and Titles

Three of the final five Film Bitch Award categories announced. Click over for the nominations!

When I think of my wife I always think of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers.

BEST OPENING SCENE
Did you find any opening scene as perfectly bold as Gone Girl's recently? It's instantly classic as kick-offs go. Still horrified two months later that Gillian Flynn didn't get an Adapted Screenplay nomination. WTF. Her work was stronger than any of the nominees in her category (the good stuff was in Original this past year obviously). But that wasn't the only entrancing first minute of a film. Under the Skin's "creation" (?) anyone?

BEST ENDING 
Spoiler alert! Movies have endings. Some more satisfying than others. Which were your favorites this year? Were you a bawling but optimistic and newly invigorated civil rights champion at the end of Selma, Pride, or Love is Strange? Was that desert gaze into an open future the perfect ending for Boyhood? Were you chanting USA ironically with the bloodthirsty crowd at the end of Foxcatcher or gazing up with Emma Stone in Birdman or Reese Witherspoon in Wild?

CREDIT SEQUENCES 
I didn't nominated The Grand Budapest Hotel here but I do love that tiny dancing Russian at the tail end of the credits and his exuberant dancing (i wish I had a gif of the confetti throwing part). That's basically a documentary of what happens in my apartment every time I finish an article. As for this category, it shouldn't surprise you to see Captain America: Winter Soldier's bold black white and red pop art as a nominee but do you remember those hilarious cast photos from Neighbors in the closing credits? I almost forgot them which would have been a tragedy. 

I mean...

 

Two categories left (acting in limited or cameo roles) so stay tuned for that and the gold silver and bronze medals this week as grand finale to 2014's film year. Hooray!

(And now I'm off to do that little dance backstage. Byeeeee.)