Tues Top Ten: The Year in Dance Scenes

Michael C. here. Over at Serious Film I've been handing out awards for 2012, but when I tried to name the dance scene of the year I realized 2012 was too packed with great contenders to choose only a single champion. So here is a more comprehensive list of the best scenes where characters couldn't fight their dancing feet.

Honorable Mentions

I consider Holy Motor's accordion scene more parade than dance otherwise it would surely top this list. Likewise I don't know quite how to classify Philip Seymour Hoffman's disturbing performance during The Master's nude party fantasy although it certainly impossible to forget. As for Magic Mike all the movie's dance scenes blended together in my memory, so maybe some Ladies of Tampa can enlighten me in the comments as to which one was the standout. 

 Top 10 Dance Scenes of 2012 

10. Take This Waltz 
I wasn’t as in love with this infidelity drama as many were, but it had a handful of great scenes where I could see what everybody else was so excited about. The finest was a house party where the secret life of Michelle Williams’ character threatens to spill out into public view on the dance floor to the tune of Feist’s terrific cover of Leonard Cohen’s Closing Time. 

9. Silver Linings Playbook (and 8 more films after the jump)

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Steven Soderbergh @ 50

You guyz. I totes forgot to honor Steven Soderbergh on his 50th birthday on Monday but The Stubborn Jodieness of Jodie, who also just turned the half-century mark, was all I could process. And process. And process. Anyway... Soderbergh announced his retirement so long ago and kept right on making movies that it's started to seem like a comic dark cloud that's hung over his career since, oh, sex, lies and videotape (1989).

I couldn't begin to list my 50 favorite things about him, or even my top ten films since I haven't been a completist and he's often as much of a deterrent as a draw for me (especially this past decade). But there's no denying that he's a restless, creative guy who occassionally crafts something masterful.

Here are his five essential films according to my brain... aka my favorites. I love them so much more than the rest of his output that it's not even close. That said I have very very dim memories of King of the Hill (1993) and some people swear by it. (Which five Soderberghs are closest to your heart?)

• sex, lies and videotape (1989, Palme D'or at Cannes, Oscar screenplay nom)
• Out of Sight (1998)
• Erin Brockovich (2000, Best Director nomination with Oscar)
• Oceans Eleven (2001)
• Magic Mike (2012)

And how thrilled are you that Behind the Candelabra, his Liberace biopic, is not so very far away now?

Yes No Maybe So: Trance

JA from MNPP here

 

It's only been two years since Danny Boyle had James Franco sawing his own arm off (I just felt a collective shudder as we all remembered that nerve scene) for an oscar nomination in 127 Hours, but somehow it seems longer. I suppose two years of watching James Franco posture every which way art-wise translates into an eternity in relative time. So I find myself missing Danny Boyle. He's been too busy staging a battle between an army of Mary Poppinses and Lord Voldemort at the Olympics to make movies... until now!

The trailer for his latest flick Trance popped online last week, and we're feeling enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic enough to give it the ol' "Yes No Maybe So" treatment. Here goes.

YES

• Well Danny Boyle, obviously... (more after the jump)

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Curio: Marie Harnett's Pencil Drawings

Alexa here with your weekly art inspiration.  Marie Harnett is an artist out of the UK whose focus is on film. She makes widescreen-format, small yet intricate pencil drawings of filmstills that "capture fleeting moments of drama, suspense or beauty and, when released from the original context of the film that inspired them, the drawings each tell a story of their own."

Marie holds a miniature Keira

I recently came upon her work and was struck by the level of photorealistic detail she manages to cram into her tiny compositions, and by how they evoke the history of cinema, despite her of-the-minute subjects (she even draws stills from trailers).  And she's doing quite well for herself; tiny mezzotints of her drawings sell for upwards of $2000! Here are some examples of her current work; you can see more on her website.

'Gatsby' series, 2012

Gangster Squad, Chéri, and A Single Man loveliness after the jump

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Best Celebrity Tweets on Globe Night

I ♥ celebrities. Always have. Always will. Even when I find them insufferable I have to stargaze. Having met so many of them now I'm fully aware that they are only people just like you and me that but for one lucky break or important connection or family wealth or extraordinary quirk of DNA or once-in-a-lifetime talent or deals with Beelzebub or being in the right place at the right time or any number of reasons, they'd be on this side of the 'net obsessing on celebrities just like you and I. Well, actually in the age of twitter, the lines are ever blurring and who is on what side anyway. Everyone loves celebrity. Even celebrities. Here's a sampling of some celebrity or celebrity-adjacent tweets I enjoyed from this year's very memorable Golden Globes. 

ZACHARY LEVI (Chuck)

I wanna be the illegitimate offspring of Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell in my next life.

— Zachary Levi (@ZacharyLevi) January 14, 2013

Wiig and Ferrell did really have the crowd roaring. Wiig is dependably hilarious but they worked so well as a team riffing on one single joke across five nominees. (P.S. After Tangled, shouldn't Hollywood be asking Levi to work in musicals?)

MATT OSWALT (Puddin' strip)

Golden Globes isn't over until Tommy Lee Jones is ziplocked and put back in the freezer between Mickey Rourke and some venison

— Matt Oswalt (@Puddinstrip) January 14, 2013

LOL

Tommy Lee jones was enormously grumpy. It's true, internet. It's true. 

 

more after the jump...

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