Curio: Just Keep Livin'

Alexa here. My personal highlight of the Golden Globes this year, and of my Sunday night, was Matthew McConaughey.  I'm glad that all the prognostication over the last few years finally payed off with a win for him. And I loved/found it hilarious how "on brand" he was with his speech (opening it with "alright alright alright" and closing with a variation of "just keep livin").

Right after the show I threw "True Detective" on, and it couldn't have lived up to the hype more, with McConaughey delivering yet another career-high performance in the first episode.  Since the chances of a Wooderson-esque speech at the Oscars are probably still low, let's celebrate this moment with some curios in the Texan's honor.

More after the jump including bongos...

Click to read more ...

Film Bitch Awards: Actor & Supporting Actor

I haven't forgotten about The Film Bitch Awards, also known as "Nathaniel's Ballot" that once grand internet tradition (14 years now, Jesus!) that has been eroded by my time management problems. But no more. I'm turning over new leaves in 2014, you'll see, and so we begin now with the catch-ups.

And now 43 words it gives me great pleasure to type...

Elyes Aguis Kyle Chandler Bradley Cooper Chris Cooper Bruce Dern Leonardo DiCaprio Paul Eenhoorn Chiwetel Ejiofor Michael Fassbender James Franco James Gandolfini Jake Gyllenhaal Tom Hanks Sergio Hernandez Oscar Isaac Hugh Jackman Jared Leto Matthew McConaughey Mads Mikkelsen Tye Sheridan and Keith Stanfield 

And that's just the cream that rose to the top for yours truly when it came time to sort out my thoughts on the best performances by men this year at the cinema. Though supporting actor was lean, the leading men more than made up for it. It was such an unusually rich year that I, the internet's ringleader for actressexuality, am arguably or at least sometimes more excited about Best Actor than Best Actress. This has little precedence.

My ballot: BEST ACTOR & BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The whys and the whos on great work from 12 Years a Slave, Nebraska, Spring Breakers, to Inside Llewyn Davis and beyond...
Three previously posted ballots: ANIMATED FEATURE, CASTING AND ENSEMBLE 

Oscar's Documentaries: Tales from the Shortlist (Part 3)

Glenn continues his 3 part look at the 15 finalists for Best Documentary. (Here is part one and here's part two icymt). Watch along with us!

Firstly, apologies for the delay in this third instalment. I had problems with my HBO Go, which so it turns out was the only way to catch at least one of these films. 

Cutie and the Boxer
Synopsis: Documenting the lifelong partnership between Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, Japanese artists living in New York as they struggle with selling art pieces to galleries and private collectors, their son, and competitiveness.
Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Festivals: Brisbane, Calgary Underground, Full Frame, Houston Cinema Arts, Karlovy Vary, London, Sarasota, Seattle, Stockholm, Sundance, Sydney, Toronto, Tribeca, True/False, Vancouver
Awards: Emerging Artist Award (Full Frame), Grierson Award – Special Mention (London), Documentary Directing (Sundance), Documentary Audience Award 2^nd Place (Tribeca), Outstanding Debut/Outstanding Graphics and Animation/Outstanding Original Score (Cinema Eye)
Box Office: $170,449 (max. 12 screens), on iTunes and DVD now
Review: It’s hard not to be won over by the protagonists of Cutie and the Boxer. Naturally, Cutie is the more interesting of the pair given her lifelong position in the shadow of her husband and there are pangs of sadness to be found in the rollcall of gallery figures and artists praising and wanting to look at his work and not her own. Debut director Zachary Heinzerling noticed this and focuses the pair’s climactic exhibit around her and the praise she receives. Heinzerling is a talented man and definitely has a future in documentary filmmaking that is both topically interesting and visually splendid.
Oscar? A sneaker possibility if voters respond to the personalities of the Shinoharas and the themes of artistic integrity. Otherwise I think its more populist leanings may hurt it when placed alongside such emotionally involving pictures like The Act of Killing and The Crash Reel.

Photographers, journalists, brave kids and tortured families after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Say What? After Party

Amuse us. Add a caption or dialogue to this photo starring Meryl, Harvey and Emma from a Golden Globes after party

Post-Globe Thoughts / Linkings

My apartment gets too much sunlight and I have no window blankets. So I can't see the TV during the day so I can't rewatch the Globes so I can't blog more about them until tonight and then who knows if any of us will be in the mood when I can't so maybe I won't and I just don't know anymore. The tragedy of it all!

Until then, I devour uneaten party snacks and commence with the linkings...

first a few non-Globes items
EW really thoughtful piece on Armond White and why he was just expelled from the NYFCC 
Critic Wire "Should film critics give out awards?" Of course they should. Awards are just another form of evaluation and needn't be thoughtless. They just shouldn't do it badly, ot to "predict" the Oscar race.
THR Tang Wei falls for a money scam. I hope they find the culprits but the greater crime is the career momentum the Chinese government stole from her post Lust Caution. Can we prosecute that, instead?
Dark Horizons Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the upcoming Sandman adaptation 
The Playlist Martin Scorsese on the campaign trail with Wong Kar Wai for The Grandmaster. I still have no firm read on whether or not that is making it into Best Foreign Film 

today's must read 
W Mag John Waters on staying famous once you've achieved celebrity. It's a pretty great read. Consider this bit:

If you’re really lucky, you might survive a disaster, and that’s a sure way to get your Wikipedia page updated if it’s been dormant for too long. My friend Pauline jokes that if she were in an airplane crash with me and she was the only one to die, the headline would read: air disaster! john waters lives. one dead. 

okay back to the globes
Vanity Fair Bobby Finger's imaginary Globe conversations are super. I love Streep's world domination plot (although hasn't she kind of already accomplished that?)
NY Daily News ok, I need to understand whether or not Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence are together. Or are they like Friend with Benefits. Make up your minds!
Variety inside the after parties. Fun(nish) photos of the rich and famous at play
Zimbio more after party pics
TFE I looked back on my Globe predix and was shocked to realize that I did REALLY well (though I generally suck at Globe winner predictions) only missing stuff the mainstream media doesn't care about (but I do) like foreign, screenplay, & both music prizes among the film awards! I even somehow correctly predicted that 12 Years a Slave would only win Best Picture. I guessed HORRIBLY with the TV awards but I've never claimed to know any better there

drawing by Liza Donnellytoday's must see
Liza Donnelly took live-blogging in a fresh direction by live-sketching the Golden Globes. Damn fabulous. 

On That Woody Allen Cecil B DeMille Thing...
Ronan Farrow twitter's favorite fusion of political pundit/celebrity spawn/hot guy, wasn't pleased. Lots of people joined in the Globe-shaming. But really, now. It's so easy to judge from afar but if we are going to deny artists prizes for their work based on their moral character, actual crimes, alleged crimes, grudges people hold against them and the like would we have any prizes at all? I'm not even exaggerating. Prizes for the arts should be about the arts always, and not about someone's character. There's no prize for "Most Nice" or "Best Person" and even if there was, wouldn't showpeople be terrible judges of it? (Including Mia Farrow who is willing to testify on Roman Polanski's behalf but Woody Allen honors are beyond the pale?)
Salon has some issues with it, too, although calling out the Globes for their lack of regular honors to women is relatively speaking, misleading, since they're SO MUCH BETTER ABOUT IT than the Oscars ever have been and only a few sites (like, um, this one you're on right now) take AMPAS to task for it.
Shawn Levy did a post earlier this summer that's especially relevant now, detailing how strong Woody's Oscar history is in terms of directing actors. It's not just strong but it's varied which he gets absolutely no credit for as the article amply illustrates.

Exit Image
Jason at MNPP dubs this Globe after party pic "The Picture That Broke The Internet" and then hedges with a "this could finally be the one to do it" but either way, yes! I mean, at least it broke tumblr. I haven't been on today but I'm quite sure it's dead.

If you somehow squeezed in Tom Hiddleston for a three-way, all the breakings, everywhere.

This awesome image unfortunately reminds that it was a very BRO evening at the Globes with lots of frathouse like back patting going on. This was probably best exemplified by Michael Douglas and Jared Leto's tone deaf acceptance speeches for gay roles (ouch, you really wanna play it like that?) though I think it's unfortunate that McConaughey is getting roped into that conversation because his speech was not offensive and people are stretching ungenerously when they go there, the Leo for Wolf win after that 'supermodel's vagina welcome' (Fey & Poehler, you delight), and a million photos of handsome powerful rich (mostly) white straight guys pointing at the camera, with smug smiles on their faces (lampooned by Melissa McCarthy as Matt Damon on stage in point of fact).

And so on and so on...

Dude.