Flaws and All... The Worst Within The Best (Pictures)

Does a movie have to be perfect to be deemed a masterpiece or a grand success? That's a rhetorical question of course since the answer is no. What's perfect after all? Sometimes mistakes and flaws in judgement (which are, of course, in the eye of the beholder) can make a movie more organic and lively than something that is technically irreproachable.

Encore Entertainment was recently ranting about the weird and unfortunate trend of people rooting for movies to fail... in many cases even before they've seen them. It's a weird truth about Oscar season and I'll admit right here and now before we begin that I've also been guilty on occasion. It's how I've been feeling about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from the moment I heard they were splitting one book into three movies. It rubbed against all of my core beliefs about what's wrong with Hollywood and their willingness to sacrifice good storytelling and goodwill to shake down eager fans for every last penny.

It's easiest to spot this kneejerk HAHA YOU SUCK mentality in the ongoing attacks on Les Misérables around the internet and the almost sadistic joy you could feel rippling out when it debuted to unexpectedly harsh reviews. More...

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Life of Link

GQ John Smedley's Ian McLean has really good taste. Check out his shoutouts to Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett
Stale Popcorn Jean Valjean and Fantine strike a pose 
In Contention on the various screenplays that are ineligible for the WGA and can't therefore get the Oscar bump. As usual there are a lot of them rendering the WGA fairly ineffective as both a predictive precursor and as a competitive prize since it's dealing with so few of the year's movies!

Cinema Blend Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair, Anna Karenina) is a starlet in demand now. Once you've seen both of those movies, you'll demand her too!
Jean-Pierre Jeunet shares his storyboards from Life of Pi back when Fox was considering him to direct it years and years ago. Interesting inside glimpse of filmmakers grappling with movies they didn't make.
NPR on the hunt for Bin Laden and the accuracy of Zero Dark Thirty. Was it really a woman at the center?

"I think it's a literary device. It's not inaccurate, but it's not wholly accurate," says writer Peter Bergen, who himself has spent many years tracking bin Laden. 

Movie|Line turns out that a very disturbing NC-17ish scene towards the end of Django Unchained (MILD SPOILER: Django is hung upside down completely naked and receives two malevolent visitors) was even more cruel in an earlier cut --  Samuel L Jackson says his character burned Foxx's nipples off.
Celebuzz celebrates the shortest male stars from Jason Statham to Daniel Radcliffe in an infographic
Fox Searchlight you can pretend you're an awards voter by downloading FYC booklets! 

Cross Country Critics Champs

To some extent I've lost my taste for covering the critics awards -- at least in depth -- since there are more each year and more which do that coy "nominations first!" thing to try to drum up publicity (it works since the web always needs content... even if the content is the same as the day before as so many of these awards prove!). I'm not trying to be a killjoy -- I'm really not! -- but I guess I have anger issues with my fellow critics since they are all so willing to abandon anything they loved during the year once the year end Oscar movies hit. I challenge everyone to go back and read what critics wrote about Michael Fassbender when Prometheus premiered and then wonder why they can't be bothered with them now... even when they go so far as to announce nominations ?!? Oscar has a bias against genre performances but unfortunately many of the same media voices who complain about this share the same bias in their own year end honors! Someone will have to explain to me how Alan Arkin in Argo and Robert DeNiro in Silver Linings Playbook for example are more exemplary examples of Great Film Acting than Fassy in Prometheus. I'd wait but I fear the wait would be longer than the running time of 25 historical epics combined  since who in their right mind would try and justify this verbally even if they votes say differently?

But look at me flying way off track!

So grumpy, me, I apologize! All that said, this year has had a bit more variety in critical winners than some recent years and I do some love reading awards lists. So let's hit four cities and one multi-city stop after the jump and see what they liked most this week... The results are not uninteresting. MORE

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"Outstanding Cast in a Comedy, Musical or Pleasantry"

Part 1 of 2 [updated: here's pt 2]
In this new edition of the podcast, Nick Davis, Katey Rich and Joe Reid join Nathaniel -- still fighting coughing jags -- to discuss the oddity that is the Golden Globe Comedy or Musical Nominations. Is Salmon Fishing in the Yemen really a comedy? We also cast our own votes in the SAG Ensemble race.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen instead of Bernie?
• Inflight Movies
• The absence of real comedies from the nominees
• HFPA's attack on gay icons: No Barbra???
• SAG's frustrating "Outstanding Cast" rules and who we would vote for
• Django Unchained, Ted, Cloud Atlas and more in this free-flowing conversation

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the bottom of the post. But, as always, the podcast isn't complete without you. Join in the discussion and cast your own ensemble and best comedy votes in the comments.

Outstanding Cast & Globe Comedy

The Box Office: An Expected Journey

I was so enamored with Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings trilogy a decade ago that it hurts my heart to see him now as merely Smaug, a monstrous collector of coin or even as Gollum, hanging so tight to his precioussssssss (Middle Earth) that he's lost sight of everything that once made him an artist and not a brand. It happens to a lot of über successful people. It's grown increasingly difficult to shake the feeling that his days as a great filmmaker are long gone and maybe ended with the remarkable fantasy trilogy, perhaps casting off to Grey Havens with the elves at the end of The Return of the King. Since then Jackson has made one beautiful but wildly bloated epic (King Kong) that suggested he might have a George Lucas problem (no one willing to tell him "no"), one outright terrible misfire of a whatsit? (The Lovely Bones) that suggested he might not know what the hell he's doing anymore and now The Hobbit, which was a relatively short book that has been stretched into three long films for only one reason: coin.

Maybe that's not a charitable assumption since I haven't seen the film (I REALLY don't want to spoil my Lord of The Rings experience which was beautiful and just-right) but if three big films was enough to cover (grandly) three thick books, three big films is too much to cover one thin one. But on that sordid topic of coin -- we haven't discussed box office in a month -- The Hobbit earned a ton of it though surely not as much as intended given that that seems to have been its entire intent as a cash cow prologue. 

Box Office Top Twenty - Actuals
01 THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY $84.7
02 RISE OF THE GUARDIANS  $7.4 (cum. $71.3) Capsule Review  
03 LINCOLN  $7.2 (cum. $107.8) Podcast Discussion
04 SKYFALL  $7 (cum $272.3) My Review & Deborah's Review
05 LIFE OF PI $5.4 (cum. $69.5) Michael on the Ending
06 THE TWILIGHT: AN EXPECTED ENDING   $5.1  (cum. $276.8)
07 WRECK-IT RALPH $3.2 (cum. $168.7)
08 PLAYING FOR KEEPS $3.2 (cum $10.8)
09 RED DAWN $2.3  (cum $40.8)
10 SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK $2 (cum $16.9) Beau's Review

11 FLIGHT  $1.9  (cum. $89.4) Review
12 ARGO $1.1 (cum. $104.9)
13 HITCHCOCK $1 (cum $3) Review
14 KILLING THEM SOFTLY $1  (cum $14.1)
15 ANNA KARENINA $.9 (cum $8.3) Capsule Review

In other moneyed news: Lincoln continues to illustrate that Abraham had long legs and still knows how to use them (100+ million and counting for a talky drama about ideas. WTH? Sasha points out that it's now in the money lead of all the Oscar contenders); Silver Linings Playbook continues to underwhelm (not that it had a chance to break out given that it's a mainstream movie that peculiarly decided to pretend it was an arthouse film); And  Anna Karenina ought to be proud of that gross given the cold shoulder it's gotten from awards bodies. 

Where did you spend your precioussssss coin this weekend?