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Sunday
Dec112011

LAFCA & NYFCO Part Ways Over The Artist

Could Fassbender be eyeing Oscar?Andreas here. Want to see end-of-year craziness in action? Look at today: first, the Boston Society of Film Critics announces their awards, then before they've finished, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Online start tag-teaming it! It all starts to blend together sometimes -- Emmanuel Plummer won for something called Drivemaids? -- but no worries, we've got it straightened out:

First, the LAFCA winners...

PICTURE The Descendants (runner-up: The Tree of Life)
DIRECTOR Terence Malick for The Tree of Life
 (Runner-up: Martin Scorsese for Hugo)
SCREENPLAY Asghar Farhadi for A Separation (For Your Consideration!)
ACTRESS Yun Jung-hee for Poetry
 (Runner-up: Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia)
ACTOR Michael Fassbender for A Dangerous Method, Jane Eyre, Shame, and X-Men: First Class
 (Runner-up: Michael Shannon for Take Shelter)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jessica Chastain for everything
(Runner-up: Janet McTeer for Albert Nobbs)
SUPPORTING ACTOR Christopher Plummer for Beginners
 (Runner-up: Patton Oswalt for Young Adult)
CINEMATOGRAPHY Emmanuel Lubezki for The Tree of Life
 (Runner-up: Cao Yu for City of Life and Death)
PRODUCTION DESIGN Dante Ferretti for Hugo
 (Runner-up: Maria Djurkovic for Tinker Tailor)
DOCUMENTARY/NONFICTION Cave of Forgotten Dreams
 (Runner-up: The Arbor)
ANIMATION Rango
 (Runner-up: The Adventures of Tintin)
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM City of Life and Death
 (Runner-up: A Separation)
NEW GENERATION The creative team behind Martha Marcy May Marlene
INDEPENDENT/EXPERIMENTAL Spark of Being
BEST MUSIC/SCORE The Chemical Brothers for Hanna
 (Runner-up: Cliff Martinez for Drive)

 

Commentary and NYFCO awards after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Dec112011

Boston Society of Film Critics. Beantown Loves... 

would you be so good as to participate in the bean lottery? Please submit your bid for the number of beans in the bottleBeantown critics have assembled today to announce their prizes. LAFCA and the NYFCO critics are also announcing later.

Awful lot of bean vote counting going on today. In Boston's case they're being very leisurely about it. We'll see how quickly the other associations move. I only illustrated with Melancholia's wedding bean lottery because I was just watching it last night and here we are this morning and never mind...

The winners!

PICTURE The Artist (Runner up: Hugo and Margaret)
DIRECTOR Martin Scorsese for Hugo (Runner up: Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist)
ACTRESS Michelle Williams for My Week With Marilyn (Runner up: La Streep. Guess Boston liked their biographies above all else this year) 
ACTOR Brad Pitt for Moneyball (Runners up The Clooney & Fassy)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids (runner up: Jeannie Berlin for Margaret
SUPPORTING ACTOR Albert Brooks for Drive (runner up: ???) 
SCREENPLAY Moneyball (runner up: Margaret
CINEMATOGRAPHY Emmanuel Lubezki for The Tree of Life (runner up: Robert Richardson for Hugo)

The Supporting Actress Competition. "That's a lot of energy to deal with!"

There's one or almost one for #TeamMargaret. I wish I'd seen it. Alas. But McCarthy picks up her first critics award for Bridesmaids. Will more follow? The BFSC claims it was a "very competitive category" this year. By which perhaps they mean Jessica Chastain vs. Jessica Chastain vs. Jessica Chastain vs. All of the Bridesmaids perhaps?

I'm wondering if Albert Brooks won in a landslide for Drive. Possibly he did as they didn't announce a runner up. 

DOCUMENTARY Project Nim (runner up: Bill Cunningham New York)
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Incendies (runners up: A Separation and Poetry)
ANIMATED FILM Rango
FILM EDITING (in memory of Karen Schmeer) Christian Marclay for The Clock (runner up: Thelma Schoonmaker for Hugo... see previous post)
NEW FILMMAKER (in memory of David Brudnoy) Sean Durkin for Martha Marcy May Marlene (runner up: JC Chandor for Margin Call

At last Durkin beats Chandor to a prize. I knew some group would have to go that way. Both are good films but some have issues with the ambiguity of Durkin's work (see my Fandor contemplation of the problem.)

ENSEMBLE CAST CARNAGE (runner up: Margaret. Poor #TeamMargaret... bridesmaids but never the bride)
USE OF MUSIC IN FILM *tie* DRIVE & THE ARTIST (runner up: The Descendants... which, lol, um... okay. Hawaiian music for Hawaii? Award worthy decision-making right there!)

Boston joins #TeamMargaret. Sort of

They also handed out several local prizes and honors which you can read here. And they made a special plea to Fox Searchlight to start backing Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret. The film kept getting runner up notices. Poor #TeamMargaret ... always the bridesmaids but never the bride. In their words:

The Boston Society of Film Critics expresses its regret that Fox Searchlight refused to distribute screeners of the film "Margaret" and scheduling only a last-minute screening after numerous requests. The film, which received an extremely limited release, was a favorite of many BSFC members and could have won several awards had it been made available for viewing within a reasonable timeframe.  Despite this disadvantage, "Margaret" was a runner up in three of the BSFC’s award categories. We encourage Fox Searchlight not compound this oversight and to make screeners available to the voting body of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and so give the film a fair chance in the upcoming awards competition.

Saturday
Dec102011

Q&A Crumbs: Best of Best Supporting Actor + Legendary Why?

If the Q&A column were a TV series it'd be one of those painfully confusing ones that goes off the air unexpectedly only to return with 2 hour specials and extra webisodes and then go on hiatus again. I can't control it! It controls me. I've already answered small screen questions, and Thursday's column was on movie etiquette, crowd reactions, and purposefully bad acting. So here's are a handful of Q&A crumbs that I felt the need to answer and now we are dunzo until the next round. Whew.

As ever, I love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments. The more the merrier when it comes to movie discussions, don't you think?

MESHI: Are there any legendary performances (like, Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara-type legendary) that you just don't get what all the fuss is about?

I have a hard time understanding the fuss over Marlon Brando in Last Tango In Paris. To me it feels less Method then Show-Off with no one willing to say, 'pull it back dude. Modulate.' So, no, I don't get that one despite its enormous acclaim. I will entertain the possibility that I saw it when I was too young for it, though.

MARY: What are you most excited for? "Mirror Mirror" or "Snow White and the Huntsman"?

I believe you'll find my answer in if you click on the Snow White tag. I'm pretty good with the tagging at the bottom of each post to make things easy for y'all to investigate topics of interest. Short answer: Hunstman by a country mile on a horse drawn carriage with a bad wheel. 

CAL ROTH: Call the next Oscar winners now in acting now. No guts, no glory. Don't think too much about it. Just say how do you feel about these races.

I hate doing this because it's a lose-lose proposition before nominations are announced. If you're right and you go with the party line (I guess at the moment that's: Clooney & Streep, Redgrave & Plummer) you risk being part of that horrible machine that takes all the fun out of Oscars by making it into one big echo chamber that reenforces lazy voting. If you're right but you appear to be wrong (hmmm: Pitt & Davis* & Spencer & Plummer?) because your answer sounds too "two months ago*" people don't remember and they just think you're not that good at prognosticating. Anyway, i much prefer predicting nominees to predicting winners which is TOTALLY BORING due to the echo chamber... particular in the last stretch when the same 4 people will start winning every award and people will only guess otherwise to have something to write about.

* I often wonder why people have perpetual amnesia about the fact that buzz volumes always rise when a movie opens or start screening (provided it's not bombing) and always subside when it's been out a few months and is "familiar". But... buzz volume levels rise and fall and rise again...and fall again. The only thing that matters is how volumous they are when voting is happening.

SOSUEME: As an avid reader of TFE for the last two years, I finally had my first Nathaniel dream...in it, you were moving to California...obviously, the dream has more to do with me than anyone else, but it got me thinking...would you consider moving to CA to be closer to the industry, the events, possibly more money, or does New York suit you just fine?

I'm happy right here though I'd totally be bi-coastal if I could. Writing can be a lonely activity so you need handy social escapes for sanity. Nearly all of my closest friends live here so I gotta stick around. Plus: New York City needs me ;)  ...most of the Oscar pundits are in Los Angeles but AMPAS is bicoastal!

ONE MORE.... SPOTLIGHT QUESTION!

Best Ever Consecutive Run for Supporting Actor Oscar?

MITCHELL: What do you believe to be the most deserving performance to ever win Best Supporting ACTOR?

This is my least favorite of the four acting categories within Oscar because it seems to have the least correlation to actual quality year after year. For whatever reasons it's more beholden to other Oscar factors that aren't really about the work in question: career honors, which "types" they like, which films they like, fame levels before the nominations. This category is also particularly egregious in terms of category fraud. I mean you could argue that it's been five years since an actual supporting performance won (that'd be Alan Arkin) even though the last four winners were four kinds of miraculous in terms of actual quality [tangent: best run ever in this category if you allow for the fraud!]. Once you remove all the co-leads I think there are a few absolute essentials who not only did inspired work but who elevated already strong films by virtue of their lynchpin contributions to its tone, identity and overall aesthetic punch.

So without pouring over the books for too long I'd say I couldn't really live without Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Joel Grey as "the emcee" in Cabaret (1972), or Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994).

But this list might change on a different day and I can't choose just one! Can you?

Saturday
Dec102011

American Linko

Slant analyzes the new poster for Madonna's W.E. 
Empire Sacha Baron Cohen taking the Threnadier role we thought was going to Geoffrey Rush in Tom Hooper's adaptation of Les Miserables. 
In Contention Kris & Anne give their top ten films of the year 
Stale Popcorn on the plans to 'update' American Psycho. Hollywood executives can be so thick. It's a satire about the 80s. You don't "update" what something is about.

The Hairpin looks back at Love, Actually a predecessor of the current all star roundelay that is New Year's Eve
New York Magazine an inner monologue of a critic watching Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (I missed this somehow last week but it's great)
Animation Magazine has been hopping lately. Lots of features on the animated contenders including the ones we've heard the least about like the Spanish old age drama Wrinkles
YouTube Pulp Fiction in chronological order. I was totally taken by surprise by how it begins but it all came back to me.
The Wrap this news makes me giggle. Lifetime Television is planning to remake 1980's The Blue Lagoon. This is what's called a missing the point. The only reason anyone watched the original film was for the nudity. 
The AV Club chats with Diablo Cody about Young Adult. Check out this great exchange on the film's origins:

Diablo Cody: “Am I some kind of stunted woman-child that’s living vicariously through her characters?” And then I thought, “Stunted woman-child—that’s a character.”
AVC: Now you’re living vicariously through a character who’s living vicariously.
DC: Yeah, it’s like Escher.

Living through film characters. Sigh. Don't we all to some degree. If we're being honest with ourselves. 

Which film character have you found yourself living through?

Saturday
Dec102011

Melissa Leo Talks Short Oscar Hopeful "The Sea Is All I Know"

Any day now -- perhaps any moment! -- the Academy will release the 10-wide finalist list for the Best Live Action Short category at this year's Oscars (prediction charts). Currently approximately 70 films are qualified so it'll be a deep cut for that next-to-nominated list. One of the buzziest possibilities, though, is Jordan Bayne's "The Sea Is All I Know" which stars the LEOgend herself, Oscar winner Melissa Leo. Director and star sat down together to speak about the film after a screening here in NYC to discuss the film.

After Melissa joked about getting all dressed up for us, they chatted and answered a few audience questions.

Click to read more ...