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Saturday
Jan222011

20:10 "Det kommer en ny blomma varje år"

Screenshots from the 20th minute and 10th second of 2010 films as we close out the year through awards season. [I may be a smidge off on this one, timing wise, as my counter was all knullade but this'll do.]

Helt utrop!

That's damn amazing. Every godforsaken year on his birthday he gets a framed flower in the post. Who is sending them? Why? The answers are in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

 

Friday
Jan212011

Ear Candy: Best Sound, Score, Songs of 2010

I really am trying to get a move on with my Film Bitch Awards. If you're new to The Film Experience that's this site's annual awards. We've been doing it for (gulp) 11 years... Each year I promise myself to spend more time listening to the movies since my eyes are so greedy and always want to watch watch watch. But movies are not only eye candy. They can also provide significant aural pleasure. 

Some films that sound gooooooooood

So I've now announced the nominees in all the sound categories. mixing, editing, original song, original score and my own special category "best adapted or song score" which is a highly necessary category given that  so many films now use a mix-tape approach rather than relying on one person to provide the music. This weekend we'll try to wrap all the other "standard" i.e. Oscar categories -- as well as do final Oscar predictions -- since that's all gotta be out of the way before Oscar nomination morning. (I don't expect my lineups to match Oscar's much in sound and score but they rarely do so I won't be hurt too much on Tuesday.)

Come back and let me know what you think of the soundscapes of movies like Black Swan, I Am Love, Salt, The Social Network, The Ghost Writer, Burlesque and many more in the comments. (My ears are not as well trained as my eyes but each year I think I listen a little better. Progress)

After the Oscar nomination brouhaha winds down late next week, we'll hit the "fun" categories like Diva, Villain, Best Action Sequence. You know how we do.

Friday
Jan212011

Darren Aronofsky's Familiar Faces: Acting Hierarchy

Black Swan is the fifth feature to come from the lunatic vision of Darren Aronofsky and with his first Oscar nomination pending, let's look back on his career. While Natalie Portman is front and center for the entire hit movie and Mickey Rourke had a similarly feature-length closeup in The Wrestler, Aronofsky is the star of all five pictures. If not, he has to be considered the co-lead. He's not invisible as a director is the point even though he's not onscreen. But which faces has he used the most to sell his masterpieces and/or follies (depending on your point of view)? 

Left: Aronofsky; Right: His parents (I believe) in The Wrestler

Let's investigate.

The Darren Aronofsky Acting Hierarchy
(Quantitatively Speaking)

5 Films

One character actor has appeared in every Darren Aronofsky feature (and so has Aronofsky's dad, no joke). Will they both appear in The WolverineHugh Jackman's 5th go at the adamantium clawed Canadian supermutant? I suspect they will, though one has to wonder when Margolis is getting a bigger part. He's got such a great character face.

  • Mark Margolis -(left) pontificated about in Pi (1998) which was Aronofsky's debut feature. He also ran the sad pawn shop in Requiem for a Dream (2000) where Sara Goldfarb's TV traded hands so many times. He played Father Avila in The Fountain (2006), Lenny in The Wrestler (2008) and he appears in Black Swan (2010) briefly as a patron of the ballet.
  • Abraham Aronofsky - the director's papa delivers a suitcase in Pi, rides the subway in Requiem, works in Ellen Burstyn's lab in The Fountain, is pissed at The Wrestler at the Deli counter, and is also a patron in Swan.

 

the infamous "ass to ass" scene with "Uncle Hank"

3+ Films

  • Stanley Herman is Aronofsky's go-to perv.  He's played "Uncle Hank" twice. Who is Uncle Hank you ask? That's the lech who demands "ass to ass" in Requiem (y'all know what I'm talking about even if you'll forever be trying to block it out). He reprises the role to rattle prim Nina Sayers with obscene gestures on the subway in Black Swan. He also appears in Pi (1998) and in Aronofsky's short film Fortune Cookie. 

3 Films


  • Charlotte Aronofsky is Darren's mother. She appears in Requiem, Swan and she's totally annoyed with Mickey Rourke at the deli counter in The Wrestler.
  • Marcia Jean Kurtz you'll immediately recognize as one of the Mrs. Goldfarb's sidewalk hens in Requiem. She also works the admissions desk in The Wrestler and in the costume department of Swan, onscreen I mean. Amy Westcott and Rodarte did the actual costumes (though only Westcott will be Oscar-nominated, long story.)
  • Ajay Naidu is a medic in The Wrestler, the tortured mailman in Requiem (seriously Mrs. Goldfarb... patience! Look into it.) and Farroukh in Pi.

2+ Films

The first of them...

  • Sean Gullette is the unethical shrink basically paying for the privilege of screwing his patient Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream as she's always short on funds. Since Requiem is a hall of such compromised horrors, you may have forgotten him. Perhaps this will jog your memory: Connelly stabs him with a fork... in her daydreams. Gullette was  also the first, but certainly not the last, of Aronofsky's pool of protagonists-who-are-completely-losing-their-shit (Pi). He also appears in Aronofsky's short film Supermarket Sweep so they knew each other from way back.

2 Films

Will any of them increase their presence in The Wolverine?

  • Gregg Bello is an ER doctor in Requiem and a promoter in The Wrestler.
  • Ellen Burstyn was a legendary actress bereft of challenging material in the 1990s. Aronofsky to the rescue! Her performance in Requiem polished her star again, winning her a new generation of young fans and her sixth Oscar nomination. They reteamed for The Fountain. We're hoping against all hope that Aronofsky gives her another juicy role at some point. Though perhaps it's difficult to picture her in Japan with Wolverine. 
  • Peter Cheyenne is, we assume, Aronofsky's friend since his only two credits are in PiRequiem.
  • Joanne Gordon has a recurring role. She plays "Mrs. Octavia" in both Pi Requiem.
  • Shaun O'Hagan is currently stage managing Nina Sayer's big show in Black Swan --those ballerinas sure are a handful -- but he's no stranger to people hanging by their last threads. He was previously a ward attendant in Requiem.
  • Ben Shenkman, is a familiar face in television and film. You'll recognize from Damages or Angels in America or Blue Valentine among many others. He appears in both Pi and Requiem.
  • Samia Shoaib is a nurse in Requiem and "Devi" in Pi.

What's next?

Hugh Jackman, who gave the best performance of his career in The Fountain, will soon join the ranks of the two-time collaborators in The Wolverine (2012). While it's the sequel to a movie we'd rather not talk about, and will be Jackman's fifth run at the abrasive Canadian mutant superhero, we figure this pairing will reenergize him. At the very least Aronofsky knows from berzerker rages and if a Wolvie movie is ever going to be memorable it's got to sell those better than they've been previously sold.

Gullette, Libatique and Aronofsky

on the set of Pi (1998)

One final thing...

Though these posts are about the colors on the director's pallete (i.e. faces in movies), Aronofsky also reuses crew. His most famous collaborator is the composer Clint Mansell who has written the scores for his entire filmography. Clint also appears onscreen in Pi as a photographer. The twice production designer James Chinlund (Requiem and The Fountain) is another collaborator used onscreen (Requiem's "space oddity") and then of course there's Matthew Libatique, the cinematographer, who lensed all of the films except The Wrestler. He's currently earning multiple critics awards for Black Swan so he may finally turn his Oscar luck around; incredibly he's never been nominated by his peers in the Academy.

 

If you were to appear in an Aronofsky picture, what kind or role would you want to have? Which actor would you love to see him work with again?

*

Friday
Jan212011

"It's Showtime" Bob Fosse


I have to ask: Wouldn't a Bob Fosse biopic be better suited to ShowTime  than HBO -- just on account of that catchphrase? Think of the cynergy of marketing. Somehow I'd missed (or had forgotten, more likely) the news that HBO was planning a Bob Fosse biopic and now it's been announced that Bryan Singer will direct.

Haven't any of these people seen All That Jazz (1979)?

See, Fosse already made his own (auto)biopic albeit with silly winking name-changes to protect the guilty. All That Jazz was brilliant (still is), one of the best films of a very amazing decade, and there will be no topping it ever. Face facts: he got there first. Fosse was so committed he even planned ahead by staging his own death scene for film while he still had all his chain-smoking, pill popping, eye-dropping visionary musical wits about him. Another thing that makes All That Jazz untoppable is its distinct lack of hagiography. Or sure you come away from it knowing that Bob Fosse is a genius but he doesn't dwell on this, he just is it, and there's no efforts to soften himself for mass consumption. There's lots of singing but there's not heavenly choruses declaring him Worthy of This.

Despite my reservations I would totally watch this. But it may be a long time off. The project has no writer yet and the producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are not exactly unbusy.

What'cha think about that?

Friday
Jan212011

20:10 "I feel like there's some subtext here."

Three years ago at the original blog, I created a series called 20:07 which became one of the most popular TFE features ever and spawned a slew of imitators 'round the web. Just for fun, let's resurrect that ol' pet for the remainder of Oscar season as we finish celebrating the films of 2010 before the new film year begins.

Screen capture: 20th minute and 10th second of The Kids Are All Right

Nic: Honey, you're on a whole other tangent. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Jules: Maybe it hasn't risen to the plane of consciousness for you, yet.

Nic: [Annoyed] Uh... yeah. Maybe.


God, I love these two. Don't you? And I'm not just talking about the actresses.