Top 10 Things We Learned from the 52nd New York Film Festival

To close out our New York Film Festival coverage for the year, a quartet of takeaways from this annual highly curated celebration of international cinema. NYFF doesn't have a broad selection like a lot of festivals but there were goodies. I've asked each member of our team to send me a top ten list of things they learned (we did not consult each other on our lists).

I'll start

NATHANIEL'S TOP TEN NYFF TAKEAWAYS

1. 17 years after Boogie Nights, Julianne Moore is still 'the foxiest bitch in the world'

2. Birdman has a smorgasbord of quotable lines. My favorite on first viewing:

Popularity is just the slutty cousin of prestige."

3. Marion Cotillard is getting so mesmerizingly authentic onscreen pretty soon she's going to walk right off of it in character like she's reenacting The Purple Rose of Cairo. (I apologize for the image: no one wants to think of the Dardenne Brothers going 3-D.)

4. You should never ever sit in the middle of a row of a long-ass Mike Leigh movie if you are feeling sick. My half-apologies to my row mates who you have no right to take up aisle seats if you're uncomfortable moving for the people in the middle.

More including Whiplash, Birdman, Inherent Vice, and Channing Tatum's boots after the jump...

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Top Ten Unseen Hits

Is this "top ten day" annoying you yet? Every once in a while I like to look at the "yearly" charts to see which films are the most popular with the general public... i.e. that strange undulating shape-shifting mass of terror that inflicts so many terrible sequels, reboots, derivative horror flicks, and Adam Sandler movies on us. That blob of horror doesn't even get adventurous within genres it freaking loves. Why don't they flock to like The Boxtrolls instead of The Nutjob, you know? Why The Purge movies and not, like, The Babadook?

Here are the 10 biggest hits of 2014 once you subtract all the film's Nathaniel has seen and the ones that aren't yet on DVD. You may force him to watch something and write about it by voting. You can choose two films.

poll by twiigs.com

ALSO I'M CURIOUS...
Which big hits this year have you avoided or just didn't think to check out?

Top Ten: Most Deserving Oscar Wins of the Decade (thus far)

It's a special "top ten day" to kick off fall film season. Lists all day long. Enjoy!

As we move into awards seasons it's a good time to think positively and hope for the best. Though AMPAS is too high profile to ever get an entirely fair shake (people will always take them to task because one man's treasure is another's junk and because it's easier to remember the gross dereliction of their duties more than their classy moments) they don't screw up all the time. Some Oscar wins are highly deserved no matter how you look at it. Though it seems weird to call this young decade "the Teens" already given that we've just left the pre-teens, that's what it'll surely be called when it wraps in December 2019

MOST DESERVING OSCAR WINS OF 'THE TEENS' (thus far)
2010-2013 

Honorable Mention
 Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables (2012 Supporting Actress)
"I Dreamed a Dream" and its fearful preamble "At the End of the Day" had seismic emotional impact. Performances this raw are always risky (and usually divisive!) but I'll never forget her confrontational mix of anger, sorrow, memory and beauty; a woman staring into the abyss, still stunned she's at the brink of it.

MOST DESERVING OSCAR WINS OF 'THE TEENS' (thus far)
2010-2013 

10ish  Christian Bale, The Fighter (2010 Supporting Actor)
Christopher Plummer, Beginners (2011 Supporting Actor)
I couldn't decide which of these fine actors I wanted on the list and on an earlier draft I accidentally left both off as a result. Oops. Both are arguably leads, so it felt a bit strange to include them but they are two very fine instances of overdue actors finally winning the top gong. While they probably won at least in part as "whole career" honors, that much derided Oscar tactic that often gives actors Oscars for one of their lesser performances, doesn't always backfire; both were, happily, incredibly deserving.

09 Lupita N'Yongo, 12 Years a Slave (2013 Supporting Actress)
A close call, perhaps, with "It Girl" JLaw nipping at her barefeet. Or maybe not close at all given how much of its operatic sorrow the sometimes cerebral Best Picture owes to her proud wails and immeasurable pain.  "I'd rather it be you" 

8 more greats after the jump from Gravity to A Separation

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Top Ten Tweets: from Death Becomes Her to Dracula Untold

No, I'm not desperate for material. I'm not!

It's just that certain other more substantive articles are taking me longer than I expected because I over do it, don'cha know. In case you haven't noticed today, our season premiere, is a special "top ten day" - lists all day!

It is no secret that I love twitter. So much truth, fun, satire, insight, and silliness in 140 characters for when your attention span is very very short. You should follow the team on twitter: Nathaniel, Michael, Anne Marie, Jason, Glenn, Amir, Abstew newbies Manuel & Margaret (...and Matthew should he ever resurface)

10 BEST TWEETS OF THE WEEK
 aka random tweets that Nathaniel loved

The one thing that is more threatening to me than ebola is the proliferation of YouTube celebrities into mainstream culture.

— Robert Kessler (@robertkessler) October 13, 2014

We should remake DEATH BECOMES HER using only this year's Best Actress contenders.

— Jordan (@veilleuxwho) October 12, 2014

8 more: Clooney, Mean Girls, Dracula after the jump

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Top Ten Reasons I Should've Bought that "Baker Boys" Photograph When I Had The Chance

Today the new season of TFE begins! We're celebrating with an all top ten list day. Every few hours, a new and highly random top ten list to kick off the Fall Movie Season (our favorite time of year!). Let's start with something that's been haunting me because I forgot to post about the 25th anniversary of The Fabulous Baker Boys yesterday, one of my all time favorite films. A long time ago in a New York City that still felt like a galaxy far far away (I was a recent transplant... 1999/2000?) I attended a Jeff Bridges photography show. He's really a very good photographer and takes photos on the sets of his movies. I stared and stared at this enormous black & white photograph of Michelle Pfeiffer that Bridges had taken. 

This photo is so magnificent in person

My bank account was humiliation in numeric form though I don't remember how much the giant beauty cost.

TOP TEN REASONS I SHOULD'VE BOUGHT THAT FABULOUS BAKER BOYS ON SET PHOTOGRAPH OF MICHELLE PFEIFFER ANYWAY...

10. However $$$, it would have long since paid for itself in number of looks / pleasure derived.

09. Though there were several things that contributed to my cinephilia and actressexuality, many of which have been oft-referenced at The Film Experience (among them: Streep & Turner & Woody in theaters, a neighborhood revival house, Hitchcock on VHS and old Natalie Wood films on the TV, etcetera) Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano top was the final nail in my 'normal person' coffin. I would never again not be obsessive about these things

08. If I (inexplicably) couldn't have a reunion of Bridges & Pfeiffer onscreen, it least it would have been on the wall sandwiching me with Baker Boys mania when the pair were reunited on my television in 2010.

07. The picture would have looked even bigger in my impossibly small training-wheels Manhattan apartment

06. Jail time served from robberies to afford it, would have only brought me closer to the best of her Bad Girls: Elvira Hancock, Lamia, Velma and Catwoman, but especially icy predator convict Ingrid Magnusson (White Oleander, which should have won Pfeiffer her second or third Oscar but who's counting?) 

05. Though the frames edges were sharp and glass is hard, perhaps it would have emotionally cushioned the blow of the recent discovery that Michelle Pfeiffer recently turned down ANOTHER Oscariffic role -- Lisa Genova, the author of Still Alice discusses its journey to film and the handful of A list actresses that turned it down, starting around 5:45 mark. 

Dr. Lisa Genova Part 7 Being Present is the Best Thing You Can Do for Someone with Alzheimer's and Yourself from Bill Slater on Vimeo.

(Turning down Thelma & Louise and Silence of the Lambs and now Still Alice which might well give another long Oscar-denied actress the gold? Painful... although it probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere near Oscar with Brett Rattner attached so maybe it was smart for all those A and B+ listers to say no)

04. For a reminder of that movies insanely great cinematography. How Michael Ballhaus lost the Oscar I shall never understand.

03. Because black and white goes with everything.

02. Because this Bridges photo above was not available for purchase. I love it so much because it challenges all of my feelings and perceptions of La Pfeiffer and renders her thoroughly human... in a perfect Not Susie Diamond way.

01 For further vindication: Ain't nobody would ever spent thousands of dollars to get a framed photo of Jessica Tandy on the set of Driving Miss Daisy. Truth bomb.