NYFCC. (Ready, Set, Go: Awards Season!)

Here we go... 

Picture THE ARTIST
Director MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS (The Artist)
Actress MERYL STREEP (The Iron Lady)
Actor BRAD PITT (Moneyball and The Tree of Life)

• Big day for The Artist (top two prizes and also the leader at the Spirit Award nominations) and The Tree of Life (three prizes) and Moneyball (two prizes)
• So pleased to see Brad Pitt rewarded for two very different but totally compelling and soulful performances. Pitt's awards history has been strange so it could well be time for career honors.
• They first listed Meryl Streep's win as for "The Lady". Do you think Michelle Yeoh got her hopes up for a  minute? This is Streep's fifth win from NYFCC. They also gave her the title for Julie & Julia, A Cry in the Dark, Sophie's Choice and a multiple films win in 1979.

Supporting Actor ALBERT BROOKS (Drive)
Supporting Actress JESSICA CHASTAIN (Tree of Life, The Help and Take Shelter)
Screenplay STEVEN ZAILLIAN and AARON SORKIN (Moneyball)
Cinematography EMMANUEL LUBEZKI (The Tree of Life)

• Happy for Lubezki & Moneyball. Fine choices and NYFCC had me worried at the beginning.
• Does this mean they thought Jessica Chastian sucked in The Debt and Coriolanus? If you're going for multiples go for multiples. P.S. Chastain's best performance this year was in The Help. It's true and you know it!

Foreign Film A SEPARATION (dir. Asghar Farhadi)
Documentary CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (dir. Werner Herzog)
Animated Film no prize this year? we're awaiting confirmation...
First Film MARGIN CALL (dir. JC Chandor)
Special 2011 Prize a posthumous honor for filmmaker Raoul Ruiz 

• I wish Sony Pictures Classic would push A Separation harder and release it earlier. It shouldn't be content with just a few foreign film wins here and there.
• More bad news for Martha Marcy May Marlene after its empty-handed night at the Gothams, it loses best first feature this morning.
• Is the Herzog vote in documentary a "take that, Oscars!" jab... (it didn't even make the finalists with Oscar. They have intermittent Herzog allergies over there in California) or their genuine favorite? 

To give you a little more perspective on the New York Film Critics Circle, herewith a list of previous top awards they've handed out over the past 15 years.

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Curio: Stanley Chow's Curvilinear Caricatures

Alexa here. UK illustrator Stanley Chow is one of my favorite pop caricaturists.  It's great fun to follow his flickr as he is quite prolific, adding posters and portraits weekly, all in his signature modern, curvilinear style.  His Mad Men character tributes were so successful that the Lions Gate lawyers forced him to stop selling them. Here is a selection of his film portraits, many of which are for sale at his shop. Snap 'em up before more lawyers get involved!

Click for more, including Michael Caine, The Great Escape and Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums

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Gotham Award Winners

The Gotham Awards are going on at Cipriani's even as I type this. As you know Charlize Theron, Gary Oldman, David Cronenberg, and Tom Rothman are being honored with career tributes but competitive prizes are also being handed out.  

Tilda, Charlize, and Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) glam up the event

Awards...
Breakthrough Actor Felicity Jones (Like Crazy)  
Breakthrough Director Dee Rees (Pariah) 
Ensemble Performance Beginners 

So it hasn't been a good night for Martha Marcy May Marlene which was nominated for all three of those prizes despite no Best Feature nomination.

Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You Scenes of a Crime directed by Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock
Audience Choice Girlfriend directed by Justin Lerner 
Best Documentary Better This World

Best Feature ***TIE*** BEGINNERS and THE TREE OF LIFE
The tie between Beginners and Tree of Life is a strange development. According to IndieWire the jury debated for 2½ hours. Though I am against ties on a fundamental level, it couldn't have happened to nicer movies ;) and it's kind of a great tense way to kick off the season. Let more strange "we can't decide!" developments follow. Total agreement for 3 consecutive months is B-O-R-I-N-G.

Eeep, we're here. It's happening again. Awards season has begun. Tomorrow morning the New York Film Critics Circle announces their honorees.

Live-Blog: Oscar Bound Actress Roundtable

We've been waiting for this full video of The Hollywood Reporter's Actress Roundtable for weeks (included at bottom of this post). Last year we had fun live-blogging / discussing it, so... "again!".

This year THR assembled from left to right in couch seating: best actress hopefuls Viola Davis, Charlize Theron, Glenn Close, Michelle Williams and best supporting actress hopefuls Octavia Spencer and Carey Mulligan. The directors (we're still waiting on their full video) were on stools. Is this a subconcious move on THR's part? Putting directors on pedestals and actresses on a (casting) couch where they have to worry about how they cross and uncross their bare legs? 

00:01 Damn, starting with a toughie, asking them about performances of their own they were disappointed in. Let's watch the actresses dodge the question! This one goes to Octavia who has the least amount of work to watch, career-wise. She doesn't. She actually sounds kind of grumpy.

02:30 Michelle Williams says she watches some of her work. Naturally she won't name names but implies that she doesn't watch it if she thinks it's not going to be good. Hmmm. When is Michelle not good? But claims she's never had a bad relationship with a character.

I like being directed. I like not being in charge.

And then a cute bit about finally learning to use her computer to research Marilyn. Apparently YouTube helped that performance along. It's not just for bad karaoke and funny cat videos!

06:00 Carey Mulligan describe her Shame character as "kind of a mess..." admits she didn't do much research beyond the very basics of why cutters hurt themselves. Says that self-destructiveness of characters does not bother her off the set.

No, no, no. It's nice. It's quite cathartic; have a good cry, have a good scream, then go home and go to bed.

We love this but it probably won't win her ballot points. Don't they want to think you suffered for it?

08:00 A question about back story as follow up. Of course. Why does everyone need to know everything about backstory all the time. This make-a me crazy. If Tim Burton had made Shame, there would have been a half hour long gothic flashback to describe exactly what happened to the Shame siblings when they were precocious but gloomy kids. Who needs it? You're supposed to engage with movies and interpret them... not have them happen at you like brick walls with cemented feeling.

Carey is so cute as she struggles with this question though. She also has a laugh when talking about how much she fears taking her clothes off to be "sexy". That said, she didn't have trouble with the nudity after absorbing the character -- Steve McQueen had her look at the photography of Francesca Woodman -- and understanding her as someone "who wants to be seen."

10:50 Charlize has a potty mouth.

 ...which makes Octavia laugh. In trying to recover from dropping the F bomb Charlize then says "oh shit. sorry." LOL.

Charlize's sexual education, Viola Davis's lips and Glenn Close's eyes after the jump

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RIP Ken Russell

JA from MNPP here taking a moment to reflect upon the death of the never-a-dull-moment filmmaker Ken Russell (1927-2011). If you're unfamiliar with Russell's work, oh my god you have to fix that! I listed five of my favorite movies of his earlier today, you can't go wrong with any of them. Well... wrong isn't really the right word. Because they can be very wrong indeed. Sometimes so wrong they're right, but just as often, perhaps more often, so wrong they're just very very wrong.

Whore. Nun. Whore, Nun. Whorenun.

But that's alright! Because in Ken Russell's hands bad taste and good taste... well they got really stoned with each other, painted themselves gold, and headed to the bi-annual insane asylum orgy for nymphs and perverts, and it was hypnotic. In one corner there's Ann-Margret humping a phallic couch cushion while covered in baked beans, in another there's Alan Bates and Oliver Reed sweaty and naked and rolling around on top of each other, in another there's Vanessa Redgrave in a habit with a hump having an orgasmic god experience, and there's Kathleen Turner waving a silver dildo at Anthony Perkins, and on, and on. (It's a very loud room we're imagining, with these people.) There was nobody like him, and there won't ever be again, and movies are a lot less interesting now without him.

What's your favorite Ken Russell movie?