LinkLove
Sunday, December 8, 2013 at 12:00PM Randomness
Salon Rashida Jones clarifies her earlier statements about pop stars #actinglikewhores
Washington Post Shirley Maclaine gets the Kennedy Center Honors. What a career
Variety The Square takes the top prize at the International Documentary Awards. The doc Oscar race is really really competitive this year!
In Contention European Film Awards. We shared the winners earlier but Guy has extensive coverage
Daily News Madonna's daughter Lola plays Rizzo in Grease at NY's performing arts high school (aka the Fame school)
Salon has a really interesting piece on the Coen Bros obsession with failure via Inside Llewyn Davis though I would suggest not reading it before you've seen the movie since it reveals virtually every pivotal plot point and punchline. Save it for later
CoSign!
Jonathan Rosenbaum on "the season of critical inflation" Yes, to this. Just yes.
John Forde on the loud reactions to diver Tom Daley's coming out
i09 Wicked imagined as an animated musical (no, not Frozen)
Tis the Season of List-Making
Slant Kurt looks at 20 great shots from the film year from Spring Breakers through undersung indies like Mother of George and new treats like Her
Guardian looks at the best screen "robbers" because I guess The Great Train Robbery is coming to TV or something? (I'm not clear) from Mr Pink (interesting choice) through Bodhi (duh)
NY Post Lou Lumenick and Kyle Smith battle it out over their top ten lists - they share only Mud and Gravity
Time Magazine Richard Corliss loves The Hobbit (again? ugh) but my favorite bit is this line on Spike Jonze Her...
In a future Los Angeles so near-Utopian that no scene takes place in a car...
hee!
Reader Comments (11)
Hey! Are you posting the Supporting Actress smackdown any time soon?
clarence -- having some trouble getting that up. (sigh) trying.
" Richard Corliss loves The Hobbit (again? ugh)"
I'm always annoyed when people just completely dismiss a film like this. Especially with a talented (although recently disappointing) filmmaker at the helm with a couple of masterpieces under his belt.
There is every possibility that this and the next hobbit film are great enough films to make a number 10 on a top 10 film list. I don't see how this critics opinion deserves an 'ugh' response.
Anonny -- i'm just sensitive to this because i HATE what Peter Jackson and others are doing to the cinema, turning it into glorified television by padding their stories to absurd lengths to make extra billions. If you want to do episodic television DO episodic television. There is no shame in it. Some of it is great.
plus i'm sensitive to this because previously celebrated auteurs are always hogging critics prizes or critical raves... people just don't have room to discover new artists because they have so much hero worship in their hads. (same thing essentially with franchises drowning out new visions). the point is i'm bored of all the repetition.
Nathaniel - I felt the same way about movies turning into glorified television, but lest we forget, the "serial" was one of the building blocks of cinema (granted this was before TV and new installments came much more frequently than once per year, but still), and I'm somewhat more okay with The Hobbit and other films like it when looking through that lens. I just wish they would go the old-school route whole hog and release a chapter at a time, a month or two apart. THAT would be a fresh cinematic experience, despite being a bit closer to TV, while acknowledging cinematic history.
The Rosenbaum article is quite mind-blowing.
I am sensitive to the TV-Movie blurred line, but more so when people dismiss something they haven't seen. Nathaniel has access to the screeners, so he may well have seen The Hobbit, but if not I think it is irresponsible to dismiss movies you haven't seen.
Isn't it a wonder that you can pack three great things (Madonna, Grease & Fame) into a statement and yet the whole statement itself felt so "meh"? LOL
JRo can be of value when championing other films, like his riff on the AFI 100 list or his usual Top Ten list. I was interested to look into his opinion BITWC but instead didn't find a word and he ended up dismissing some of my favorites of the year.
The foreword to that Rosenbaum piece is a perfect (short!) expression of the vague thoughts that have been running through my mind over the last couple weeks. Now I like several of the films that he calls out quite a lot, but I too have been struck by the readiness of the film community's attitude towards aggressive, violent, or otherwise unpleasant sexual imagery--especially in light of the Nymphomaniac trailer.
I don't think people intend to do it, but I think that somewhere between the gross inflation of violence and the disappearance of sexual pleasure from film, even those of us who find ideological/artistic value in watching pleasure feel confronted and discomforted when we are presented with images of enjoyable sex on screen. We've been desensitized to violent sexual imagery, and trained to see it as a necessity of directorial vision, while at the same time we've been taught to find pleasure on film suspect. I don't know, is anyone following this? Maybe I'm just nuts.
Jestifer -- they don't actually send out screeners to the The Hobbit movies. But i get your point. I guess it's my aversion to the Oscars and to critical top ten lists being essentially like the Emmy Awards. same list each time now that movies have decided to be tv what with all the franchises and the most beloved auteurs who invariably make people's lists no matter what they've made.