Great Art Direction... According to Art Directors

Just as soon as we reached the end of the Critical Pile-Up, we hit Guild Mania. Awards season is a chain leading us to Oscar. Like SAG, the various guilds don't have as much overlap with Oscar as people think. Generally speaking the size of the Academy (just under 6,000 last I heard) wouldn't even fill one of the guilds and that includes all types and not just one profession. But it's still quite interesting to see what various artists think of their peers -- it's especially interesting when they look beyond Oscar buzz, which they sadly do less of than they should.

So what did the production designers get excited about this year... at least enough to scribble it's name on a ballot? Let's see...

I'm sorry but how PERFECT is that painting for Celia Foote's home?

PERIOD FILM
THE ARTIST Laurence Bennett
HUGO Dante Ferretti
THE HELP Mark Ricker
ANONYMOUS Sebastian Krawinkel
TINKER TAYLOR SOLDIER SPY Maria Djurkovic

This is the category people tend to get most excited about given that it's the one that most closely corresponds to Oscar's way of thinking. Some are already griping that War Horse missed the list but doesn't the cozy pretty storybook look scream "fantasy" rather than "period" -- perhaps they couldn't choose where to put it? Even the barb wire battleground looks less flesh-tearing tangible than gothically spooky movie fantastical. I understand what the film is going for but the choice sometimes feel odd -- especially all the coy looking away at the horrors of war, though that's a directorial thing and has nothing to do with the sets.

On the other hand it's not like Hugo and Anonymous prefer realism to fantasy and they're present so let's move on. 

Nice to see Djurkovic score here as her consistent but rangey interiors work is the absolute best think about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy -- all those sad beige boxed-in prisons stuffed with information, from cubicles to shafts to bedrooms to libraries to board rooms.

Great Looking Period Films They Didn't Nominate: 
A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, The Tree of Life, and W.E. 

Good luck finding what you're looking for in the haystacks of information in "Tinker Tailor"

Fantasy and Contemporary Films after the jump...

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Best of Year Pt 3: Nathaniel's Top Ten List

Best of Year Pt 1: Thirty-two flavors and then some. 2011 Treasures, guilty and otherwise.
Best of Year Pt 2: Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris, Young Adult, Pariah, The Housemaid, Shame.

NATHANIEL'S TOP TEN OF 2011

And so we reach the top ten list about which I endured my usual personal angst until I finally gave up the flip flopping, the future hindsight worrying and all the old ways and accepted the new sabremetrics of the game since I had accidentally shoved 11 films in. I ran out of time outs and it was either hit publish or forfeit my chance to play this beloved listing game.

MONEYBALL (Bennett Miller)
Columbia Pictures. September 23rd.
Who knew that a film about sports strategies and mathematic calculations -- two things I personally find enormously difficult to understand and care about even less -- could be so stirring?  Thank the typically sharp writing of Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, the assured unfussy direction from Bennett Miller who really knows his way around these sharply focused biographies (see also Capote) and an intensely pleasurable star turn from a perfectly cast Brad Pitt as a former golden boy trying to up his own game before his time runs out.
[Review]

CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami)
IFC. March 11th.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, than so to is the worth of any piece of art, whether it's a bonafide original or a copy. The worth of Kiarostami's dizzying intellectual game of a movie will vary greatly from viewer to viewer depending on whether they think the movie transcends its intellectual exercize. It's worth may even vary from screening to screening. For example, the first time I saw it I was riveted by the dialogue and Binoche's face though I thought it outstayed its welcome but the second time I was slightly annoyed with its archly comic tonal shift late in the film but also more impressed with its visual intricacies. Certified Copy spends a day in Tuscany with a weary antique shop owner (the exquisite Juliette Binoche as "She" --her character is never named) and an author by the name of James Miller (opera star William Schimmel). They are ostensibly strangers and their conversation about originals and copies (the subject of Miller's book) gives way to an increasingly complicated sense that the two of them are either play-acting at being lovers or are actually estranged spouses whose current union is a disappointingly inferior fascimile of its original form.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (Sean Durkin)
Fox Searchlight. October 21st

Martha Marcy May Marlene
With Lizzie, John Hawkes, Durkin's Team
A Perfectly Titled Time Machine
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Incantation. Puzzle. Dream.

[Review, Interview, Comic Strip]

BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig) Universal. May 13th
MELANCHOLIA (Lars von Trier) Magnolia. November 11th 
You're invited to a wedding. Don't start throwing rice yet. They're meant to be happy events but god do they try the patience. Especially when the bride or maid of honor is enormously depressed -- apocalyptically depressed even!

Brides, drivers and romantic troubles after the jump...

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Curio: Peter Strain Illustration

Alexa here. I recently came upon the work of Peter Strain and was instantly wowed.  Peter is an illustrator living in Belfast who has a vibrant, ink-saturated, dirty design aesthetic. He also happens to be the artist-in-residence at the Queens Film Theatre in Belfast, so he has focused much of his time on film posters for the indie cinema house.  And, lucky for us, he is selling prints of many of these posters at his shop. Here is a sampling, but really, you should check out all his work here.

More including Memento and The Lost Boys...

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PGA Noms: "Ides" Resurfaces, "Tree" & "Drive" Ignored

20 Days til Oscar nominations!

Every time the Producers Guild of America announces their awards, I have a split second of alternate universe confusion wherein I imagine the golfers on the PGA Tour breaking to vote on their ten favorite movies of the year. I'm pretty sure they'd have found room for DRIVE.

wocka wocka wocka

(I'm sorry! I couldn't resist.)

The other notable exclusion from the PGA's list is Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE but considering that the two most notable exclusions are auteur movies which didn't exactly light the box office on fire it makes sense that the PGA would embrace bigger and more producer-driven hits in their place. But I don't think this is bad news for The Tree of Life in the best picture race since it's obviously going to get a healthy portion of #1 votes. Enough though? Who knows.

Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures

• THE ARTIST Thomas Langmann
• BRIDESMAIDS Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel, Clayton Townsend
• THE DESCENDANTS Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
• THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Ceán Chaffin, Scott Rudin
• THE HELP Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus, Brunson Green
• HUGO Graham King, Martin Scorsese
• THE IDES OF MARCH George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Brian Oliver
• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum
• MONEYBALL Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz, Brad Pitt
• WAR HORSE Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg

The inclusion of Dragon Tattoo is the most interesting because it is neither a big hit nor a critical darling nor a sound Oscar contender (though I suppose the last point is debatable). Was it Scott Rudin directed sympathy for Embargo-Gate? Was it just lazy just-saw-that voting? Did they genuinely love it?

The inclusion of The Ides of March might be the most telling since it also scored with the Golden Globes rather unexpectedly. When I first saw it I thought "my god, everyone is underestimating its Oscar chances" but then everyone quickly shoved it to the side as an also ran and I followed suit. Perhaps my initial instinct was closer to the truth than I knew? Do you think there's Oscar life left in THE IDES OF MARCH?

animation and tv after the jump

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Box Office: Mission New Years

Your mission should you choose to accept is it to rate the Mission: Impossible movies. I'm not sure that I can since I've found all four so easy to watch, even thrilling intermittently, until I promptly forget about them the next day. That said, I think I like Ghostocol, aka. I Am Mission Four the very best. And given how well it held up after a pretty big opening weekend, perhaps other audience members felt the same?

I wonder if Tom Cruise chose the tagline himself "No Plan. No Backup. No Choice"? That might well describe this franchise for him in terms of mega-star survival if you smooshed it together. "No Backup Plan. No Choice". He needed this movie to work and it did. Well done. Extra points for choosing Brad Bird aka Mr. Incredible as your boss, Tom. 

Box Office Top Ten 3 Day New Years Weekend (Estimates)
01 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 4  $29.5  (cum. $132.4)
02 SHERLOCK HOMES 2 $21.0  (cum. $131.0)
03 ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS 3 $16.3 (cum. $92.7)
04 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO 2.0  $14.8 (cum. $55.8) 
      ....whoa, Fincher's remake falling under the 3rd week of the Chipmunks regurgitation? Ouch. 
05 WAR HORSE 1 $14.3 (cum. $40.4)
06 WE BOUGHT A ZOO 1 $13.2 (cum. $40.6)
07 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN  $11.4 ($47.2)
08 VALENTINES DAY 2: NEW YEARS EVE $6.3  (cum. $46)
09 THE DARKEST HOUR 1 $4.3 (cum. $13.2)
10 DESCENDANTS: FIRST GENERATION $3.4 (cum. $39.4) 

Talking Points
The Iron Lady was packing them in (extremely) limited release which just goes to show you that the Weinstein Co was setting fire to money by not opening it wider right away given that it's a) Meryl and b) the media is all up in that shit with Meryl profiles, 60 Minutes and the Kennedy Center Honors. That's free publicity that'll will wear off before the movie goes wide! Plus The Iron Lady is not the sort of movie that will benefit from word of mouth as it's not very good. A Separation and Pariah also opened to totally respectable if not earth shaking results which is too bad because they're both among the very best of the movies. This season is such a tough market for small movies. And yet they try to sell dozens of the best ones round about now every year.

Timid release strategies *can* work well for high quality hard to sell movies (The Artist, Shame) but you always run the risk of losing momentum... especially when you have major stars (Carnage / Dangerous Method) or brand recognition (Marilyn)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (up to $4 million) and The Artist (up to $5) both had their first million dollar weekends now that they're no longer quite so impossible for moviegoers to see. Wider please. A Dangerous Method and Carnage, which have much more improbable Oscar dreams, continue to do pretty well in super limited release. If they don't go wider soon they're totally going to miss a window since it's hard to imagine them scoring major Oscar nods.

New Year's Eve was up 92% this weekend. Gee, I wonder why! Expect it to vanish from the face of the earth next week despite being on over 2000 screens at the moment. Who gets those screens? Why is only one movie, a horror film, going wide?

Did you see a movie on New Year's or were you nursing a hangover?