Once Upon a Time in the Link
Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 8:00PM Slate has an amusing piece arguing against the Consider Uggie campaign for that wondrous terrier in The Artist.
Academy Awards 265 have qualified for Best Picture. Here is the complete Official list. I can't hear anything from all the LOL'ing since it's alphabetical and starts with... wait for it... ABDUCTION. Teehee
Oscarmetrics Mark Harris makes a case for Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life, which we agree is one of the year's best performances. Oscar is often about "it's time" and given that both of Pitt's performance were A grade this year, isn't it? And I swear I was linking up to this one before I even realized I was name-checked.
tomatoes - reviews worth reading...
Devine Wrath a lovely review of romantic drama Weekend which is now available on Netflix Instant Watch. What are you waiting for?
Capital New York Sheila O'Malley, one of my favorite critics, is wowed by Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
O, Hai...
Can I change all my BFCA and Indie Wire poll votes to this one?
top ten o' the day
Ali Arikan, a friend who is always worth a read, throws his top ten at the Chicago Sun Times from far flung Turkey. The Turkish film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which sits stubbornly beside my TV waiting to be watched (Oh the guilt-a-thon that is December!), tops his list. But for me I was most curious to read what he thought of two films I had remarkable trouble connecting to: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and We Need To Talk About Kevin (both of which I recently said a very few words on). I definitely appreciate what he has to say about Kevin though I don't like the film any better:
would reading the book help Nathaniel understand the love?A harrowing tragedy is at the centre of Lynne Ramsay's film, one we never quite see, although its repercussions we most certainly feel. The particulars of the event are at first ambiguous, and, paradoxically, it tends to become more so, thematically at least, once we find out the nature of it. Is it a mass killing at a high school? Or is there something deeper? Is the tragedy Kevin, a precocious psycho of a boy whose mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), never really wanted? Is it, in fact, Eva's selfishness? Or is it, in fact, the apotheosis of motherhood that is the real tragedy? The anachronistic and misogynistic view that the female of the species was launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same?
The film doesn't provide the answers, instead offering a glimpse into Eva's psyche, both before and after the events that sent Kevin to prison. Eva's emotional self-immolation doesn't betray just an "oy vey iz mir" pity-party of one, but also a sort of solipsism: a misappropriation and transmogrification, perhaps, of Henley's "Invictus," with Eva not just as the master of her fate, but also the executioner of her soul.
Finally...
IndieWire has year end critics consensus polling. I participated this year though as usual I'm still screening before I publish my own lists (I have about three more things I'm trying to see and two that need rewatching). The results are interesting but ...odd. Especially the supporting categories. Here's the 25 most well regarded films... the big surprises for me being A Dangerous Method (I guess those who love it, really love it) and Midnight in Paris which I expected critics to have turned against by now in the grand tradition of "if it's too popular, it's no longer cool to like it." Critics have a much higher tolerance for slow contemplative cinema as you can see. It'd be interesting to do a study of the average running time of this batch of films... or perhaps more revealing would be a study of the ratio of cuts per minute of film. After all it's hardly unusual these days for the top grossing mainstream blockbusters to have bloated running times as well. Only one of the top ten grossers of the year is shorter than an hour and 45 (that'd be The Hangover Part II) but do all of them really have 2+ hours worth of story to tell? I'd guess not.
Are you with consensus or far from it this year???
I tend to vary greatly by year though this year I'm definitely toward the middle of consensus rather than full in or way afield. I've found 2011 to be ridiculously enjoyable on the big screen.
Reader Comments (17)
Unrelated: thoughts on The Hobbit trailer, please.
Reading We Need to Talk About Kevin would definitely help. Many of the visual metaphors that Ramsay used in the film are actually quite effective and Tilda Swinton is an established goddess of acting at this point, but what makes the book effective that gets lost in film is Eva's thought processes, her brutal honesty with herself laced with threads of doubt deliberately placed by the author as to whether Eva, even in her honesty, is hiding things from herself. She is the most exquisite unreliable narrator, but in a way that doesn't work as well in movies as it does in books.
This is one of those “liked too many, loved too few" year for me. There are only 8 films I feel truly passionate about and only half of them can be found on the this consensus poll... Hopefully the other half will get U.S distribution next year.
Mysteries of Lisbon at no. 7! I have wanted to see that so badly but it was impossible to fit a four hour film into my schedule before leaving London this week. I hope it's still there when I get back...
Thanks for the link, Nathaniel!
Mysteries of Lisbon has been doing really well with critics' prizes (even winning Louis Delluc last year, and this year the Golden Satellite).
I wonder if Portugal would have been wiser submitting it instead of José and Pilar.
Anyway, it's not for everyone but it's so breathtakingly beautiful and well acted and directed... But it's 4 and 1/2 hours long.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for pointing out that weekend was on netflix!!! i had no idea, and i was ignorantly waiting away, thinking i would have to wait til the dvd came out to see it!
SUCH an amazing film by the way - as a gay man, i felt so much of the film rang true to me - something i don't always find is the case with gay cinema ...
Gotta admit...couldn't make it through Anatolia...if you have a screener of it I think it'll be a next to impossible task. But I love the mentions for A Separation and, indeed, We Need To Talk About Kevin on that list.
In terms of understanding the love...if it didn't compel you enough to look into the psychological implications of everything that was going on onscreen then that is a failure of the film to reach out to you but for me, I found the subjective exercise to be totally fascinating. Like the landscape of her life we see, the disgust we see in the pregnant women because that's what she sees, the darkness and evil we see in her child just because she herself sees it in him...whether it's there or not or if he just ends up being the murderer he does BECAUSE of that gaze and inability to connect with him is something that I think Ramsay and co. translated to screen thoughtfully. Not to mention the gorgeous techs and the complexity of torn emotions and fear and guilt and unsureness in single facial expressions Tilda gives and feels in every bone of her body. It reminded me more of those performances of hers from 20+ years ago in the Jarman films or Orlando where she was just so quietly and physically expressive as opposed to something like Michael Clayton or especially Julia (not that she isn't great in those as well, I just don't think that plays as well to her strengths).
But a lot of fans of the book that I know REALLY hated the movie's approach...I think there was good stuff in the book but her voice was just unbearable and I was actually really glad that they switched up the format and order the way that they did. It was a great feat of adaptation to just make it more conducive to the cinematic form.
JA from "mynewplaidpants" has read the book and didn't like the film much, so maybe it wouldn't help.
Too bad Beginners is not in the list.
The first two hours of Once Upon A Time in Anatolia were completely riveting. I admit I did find the final forty or so minutes to be a bit of a slog, mostly because it seemed rather to overstate the case that the first two hours had already made quite beautifully. I'd like to revisit it eventually to see if that reaction holds.
The best films of 2011 - the top 12 or 13 movies - are really great, and stronger, for me, than last year's. But after that it does seem like the quality level drops off rather dramatically. There's not that great middle class of good to very good films that really make a year feel full and rewarding.
I absolutely recommend reading We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lots of deliciously dark humor scattered throughout...I re-read certain passages when I'm in need of a laugh.
The fact that Melancholia makes it near the top of any list makes me want to blow my brains out, what an awful film with an overrated performance by Dunst. I outright loathed that film in the same way I hated Splice last year.
"Eva's emotional self-immolation doesn't betray just an 'oy vey iz mir' pity-party of one, but also a sort of solipsism: a misappropriation and transmogrification, perhaps, of Henley's 'Invictus,' with Eva not just as the master of her fate, but also the executioner of her soul."
Wow- forget analyzing We Need to Talk About Kevin. *That sentence* needs analysis. What does it all mean?!?
Many wonderful films this year, yes... Looks like an interesting award season coming up (going on?)... But I must admit I also have to give my vote to 'We Have to Talk About KITTEN'. That is just awesome!
Evan: "Eva's emotional self-immolation" (she's harming her own emotional well-being) "doesn't betray just an 'oy vey iz mir' pity party" (sprinkled in Jewish words for "oh woe is me" to communicate character's cultural background) "but also a sort of solipsism" (she only thinks she's real and everyone else around her is a delusion) ": a misappropriation and transmogrification, perhaps, of Henley's Invictus" (a poem often used as inspiration by POWs, with a stirring general theme of pride in the face of adversity) "with Eva as not just the master of her fate, but also the executioner of her soul." (A reference to the last two lines of the poem but where Henley is clearly proud to overcome with mental health intact, Eva is resigned and giving in to bitterness and resentment, executing any hope of mental health.)
Volvagia: Thank you, but I understood the vocab and the poetry reference. I just think the sentence is a twinge overly academic.
Thanks for the link, Nathaniel!