Happy Weekend Everyone. Make Good Choices.

I've been struggling with a thrown back this week but I hope to be up to my best speed again soon since I know the posting has been a bit thin of late. Fall Movie Season is just a week or so away but in the meantime there are plentiful beautiful choices for moviegoing pleasure. So make good ones.

NEW YORK & LA 
If you live in or driving distance near one of the two top film markets, make it your top priority this weekend to see Short Term 12. It's an absolutely beauty (interview & review forthcoming). Indies tend to go wider faster if they have strong per screen averages and everyone deserves a chance to see this one at their local theater. Get to this early since you'll want to share in the thrill of discovery and play missionary for it as shamelessly as I'm doing now. (I can't stop recommending it to people, even near-strangers! Especially people who I think would never go see something like it and the last time I did that was, jesus, I dont know... Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?) The point is this: Get out there and support strong filmmaking that doesn't involve visual effects and multi-gazillion dollar P&A budgets or our cinematic culture will be reduced to endless loops of "who'll play Batman next?".

(I also hear really good things about Una Noche but can't vouch for it personally just yet.)

EVERYONE ELSE
This weekend stars the wide release of Blue Jasmine but people with good taste who've already seen it will probably be hitting The World's End from the team that brought you the hilarious genre-riffs Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I'm seeing it tomorrow. One of my friends who only sees two or three movies a year and almost always under duress (I know!) calls me up and says "so there is this movie I would like to see..." I practically passed out from the shock.

STAYING IN?
Make sure to instant-watch Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969) in time for Wednesday night's penultimate Season 4 Hit Me With Your Best Shot episode. It's also your last chance to watch Oscar's Supporting Actress nominees of 1952 before The Smackdown on August 31st. So queue up: Singin in' the Rain, Come Back Little Sheba, The Bad and the Beautiful (just discussed), Moulin Rouge, and With a Song In My Heart so that you can enjoy the conversation even more and vote in the parallel reader ranking. Joining me on the panel next Saturday will be Nick Davis (Nick's Flick Picks), Matt Mazur (Pop Matters), and Brian Hererra (Stinky Lulu herself!) Next month's Smackdown year will be announced very soon. 

The Best Tweets About Ben Affleck As Superman

Last night on Twitter when the news broke that Ben Affleck was cast as Batman for the inevitable Batman vs. Superman movie, Ben Affleck and the internet reenacted that scene from The Dark Knight Rises where Batman "dies" in a nuclear explosion over Gotham. Here were my favorite tweets from that "event"... 

Have we learned nothing from 'Daredevil?'

— Ashley Reynolds (@Ashley_Reynolds) August 23, 2013

You guys, I'm really worried Affleck isn't up to acting challenge of the 2 or 3 scene where Batman isn't entirely CGI.

— Michael Cusumano (@SeriousFilm) August 23, 2013

I swear I can hear Matt Damon giggling wherever he is.

— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) August 23, 2013

The person most disappointed by the Ben Affleck news is Matt Damon, as he is now legally required to play Robin.

— James Martin (@Pundamentalism) August 23, 2013

Lee Daniels' Batman vs. Superman (a.k.a. Mo'Nique vs. Oprah with Lenny Kravitz as Alfred the Butler)

— itsonlyzach (@itsonlyzach) August 23, 2013

Hey, remember when Affleck was Superman? pic.twitter.com/rD4xn9U8RU

— Mike Ryan (@mikeryan) August 23, 2013

Batman fuck yourself?!?

— Andreas (@astoehr) August 23, 2013

In the Ben Affleck version, Batman's parents kill themselves.

— Chase Mitchell (@ChaseMit) August 23, 2013

On a more serious note, I don't get why they need a Star when Batman is the draw. Superman movies understand this and this is a Superman movie (sort of... being the Man of Steel sequel that's become a Batman vs. Superman thing in the latest example of Hollywood's fandering.) It's just setting fire to your production budget is all. It buys you one day of notoriety on the internet for heaps of millions but ticket sales will be there regardless. 

And, finally, the perfect rude 'hair of the dog' cure this morning to get this out of your system once and for all...

Not even Jennifer Garner sucks Ben Affleck's dick as much as the internet did just 6 months ago.

— Maxwell H. (@cinemaxwell) August 23, 2013

Not even Jennifer Garner fucks Ben Affleck as hard as the internet has over the last 10 hours.

— Maxwell H. (@cinemaxwell) August 23, 2013

p.s. why aren't you following me on twitter? do it!
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The Worst of The Worst Summer Seasons?

Tim here. Oscar Season is about ready to officially kick off, with the first Gurus of Gold listing landing today, and the massively important Venice, Telluride , and Toronto film festivals all starting within the next week or two, but before we move into the last phase of the movie calendar year, I’d like to spend one more moment eulogizing the year that has been, nodding one last time in the direction of the summer that, just about everybody agrees, has been the absolute pits.

We’ve already gone over that, so instead of belaboring a point, I’d like to ask the question, was summer, 2013, really the worst ever? I’m pretty confident that the answer to that is no, and to prove it, I’d like to offer up three possibilities for the title of Worst Summer Movie Season of All Time that put 2013 to shame. Or, y’know, make it look good. Whichever way you want to put it.

Three terrible summers after the jump

Click to read more ...

Gurus of Gold Begins

What will Oscar love this year? It's the question that never quite leaves the mind of the Oscar fanatic. Especially not this time of year when the bulk of the baity films are about to reveal themselves at festivals and on movie screens. August is practically the last moment of "anything could happen" dreaming. Reality (or whatever passes for it in the land of Loud Opinions) is about to set in.

So it's a perfect time for the Gurus of Gold to begin. This long running group of key awards pundits, assembled by David Poland at Movie City News has a new member this year. Me. I'm truly grateful for the honor of a place at that table.

To "set the field" we were asked to submit our top fifteen (unranked) assumptions about which films might be Best Picture bound. My fifteen won't be difficult for you to guess since they're there on TFE's Updated Best Picture Chart but here is the Guru chart. The joy of group punditry is investigating where consensus emerges and where pundits are out on limbs alone. For instance, I'm the only Guru that named Ridley Scott's The Counselor as a Best Picture possibility and I don't have much company at all when it comes to Dallas Buyers Club either. Spike Jonze's Her, JC Chandor's All is Lost, and Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, all featured in my top ten (not just my top fifteen) don't seem to be inspiring consensus opinion in terms of Best Picture heat either. As for the consensus titles that I'm cooler on than the almost all the other Gurus, that'd be Monuments Men (the trailer worried me) and Inside Llewyn Davis (I just don't see how the Coen Bros can hit gold every time) but I have good company in doubting those with Pete Hammond and Mark Harris, respectively.

12 Years a Slave was one of only 3 films to receive 14 of 15 votes

What'cha think? The Gurus of Gold chart (as well as my own) will invariably be shaken up by TIFF the festival that always changes everything by way of "First!"

UPDATED OSCAR CHARTS RIGHT HERE
Picture | Director | Actress | Actor | Supporting Actress | Supporting Actor

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"In the dark all sorts of things come alive"

I'm a day late getting to The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) for Hit Me With Your Best Shot but I think the drama queen players onscreen would understand: they're often behind schedule and over budget themselves, victims of their own masochistic impulses and grandiose ambitions!

To understand my choice of best shot, a brief preface as spoken by the film itself. About twenty minutes into the film the fledgling producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) and his hungry director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) are trying to figure out how to transcend the limitations of their budget on a B movie called Attack of the Cat Men. If they're movies are always terrible they'll never get out of B pictures. The cat suits look shoddy and cheap but Shields has a stroke of genius when he suggests that they never show the title characters at all. 

Shields: When an audience pays to see a picture like this what do they pay for?
Amiel: To get the pants scared off 'em.
Shields: And what scares the human race more than any other single thing

[TURNS LIGHTS OFF]

Amiel: The dark
Shields: Of course. and why? because the dark has a light all its own. In the dark all sorts of things come alive.  

And a final question

Now what do we put on the screen that will make the backs of their necks crawl?"

Once we've moved away from the context of this conversation (the B picture calling card) and into the shark-infested waters of their subsequent powerful Hollywood careers, this final question begins to haunt us properly. 

Though it might not be popular to say I find The Bad and the Beautiful something of a muddle in its impulses between melodrama and satire. It wants to swim with sharks but it lacks that final killing bite. Perhaps it's the way it which its three stories dovetail in the final scene which suggests that we ought to admire the shark and excuse all the blood in the water. I wish the movie had found a way to end shortly after its scary Act Two finale. For its then when we get the answer as to what would make the back of our necks crawl: Human Nature. 

BEST SHOT

GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT"

Kirk Douglas's ugly soul-baring in a vicious pitiful monologue hurled at both himself and his star and love Georgia (Lana Turner) culminates in this moment when he is reduced to animalistic snarling in the shadows. It's a great inversion of the playful showmanship at the beginning of the film, and more terrifying than any supernatural beasts in B pictures could ever hope to be. In this superb sequence, which stands your every hair on end, Minnelli and Surtees have found a way to riff on both the frequent visual motifs of their movie (where figures in shadow are often watching brightly lit movie creens) and illustrate the lurid thrill of the movies themselves. They only come alive in the dark.

see seven other "Best Shot" opinions from this classic

Don't forget!
On August 31st we'll discuss Gloria Grahame's Oscar win from this movie iin the return of the Supporting Actress Smackdown! Next week we're Best Shot'ing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Join our movie-loving club!