The Fannings: Little Girls Lost

Kurt here from Your Movie Buddy.

In W magazine's recently-released “Movie Issue” (which, as Nathaniel observed, was well worth that rare trip to the newsstand), the fashionable editors rather boldly offered not one, but two of their 25 Best Performance slots to the Family Fanning. I doubt I'd have done the same, but there's no denying it: precocious prodigies Dakota and Elle are the most naturally gifted young Hollywood siblings this side of the Smith residence.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Cherie, Miss Cleo

In 2010, both sisters appeared in movies as little girls adrift, yet both tackled their roles with an authority that left just enough of their little-girl images behind them.

"Hello, Daddy...hello, Mom..."I personally would have loved to have seen Dakota Fanning get more year-end recognition for her turn as Cherie Currie in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways, a movie that ultimately suffers from band-biopic fatigue, but is often kept afloat by a fiercely feminine POV (the first shot, you may remember, is of a drop of menstrual blood hitting the pavement – promising). Fanning is easily the highlight, putting an immensely watchable spin on the strung-out rocker cliché. Much of the delight of the performance is in that it's an evolutionary, not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman turning point for the actress, whom we've watched almost since she was in diapers. That and it's a damn good performance. Did you see when she burst onto the stage and cranked out her rendition of “Cherry Bomb!?” It's among the more thrilling things I watched on screen this year, and the gravity of that statement isn't lost on me. 
  
Elle gives herself a (well-deserved) handElle's work as young Cleo in Somewhere, another female-helmed picture (this time, of course, by Sofia Coppola), is of a far more subdued variety, but she, too, snags all the attention. Fully aware of how to portray a wholly plausible 11-year-old, yet boasting the unaffected, effortless instincts of a veteran, Elle offers what I felt this movie severely lacked. As a girl trying to gracefully deal with deadbeat parents, she scores your sympathy, whereas Stephen Dorff just gets redundant. She brings nuance and nonchalance, whereas Coppola and DP Harris Savides keep pounding you with pretentious and blatant metaphorical shots. Into the gaps of Coppola's thin blueprint of a script, she pours real spirit and humanity, whereas elsewhere in the movie both attributes are in short supply. Like her sister, Elle was born and bred for this business, and seems even ahead of her director in terms of knowing what her movie needs.

I think we can all safely say that lightning has indeed struck twice.

Agree? Disagree? What's your favorite Fanning performance?

Director ≠ Picture. (And Other Theories)

One of the things that's most bothersome during awards season is the persistent notion that Best Direction must = Best Picture. There's a healthy bit of correlation of course but this is not how I view film so it's different for my own awardage. All of the top 24 films I covered in my year end review have have strong direction of course. But Direction, like acting or writing or editing or whatnot is not always the most important element, auteur theory be damned. Some films achieve greatness through a consistent cumulation of "good" efforts across the board, others through one or two specific "Great" elements, some through strength of story, theme and plotting.

Other times the director is the principle reason that a movie is great and the auteur theory works just fine. Two examples this year: David O. Russell (The Fighter) and Jacques Audiard (Un Prophete) are both working in excessively familiar genres yet they're finding fresh new pockets of life. They have such great eyes and formidable guiding visions. So I compose my directorial list each year separate from my Best Picture list and though there's a healthy bit of correlation (7/10) the order is definitely different and these would be my top ten players (alpha order)

• Andrea Arnold for Fish Tank
• Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
• Jacques Audiard for Un Prophete
• David Fincher for The Social Network
• Luca Guadagnino for I Am Love
• Bong Joon-Ho for Mother
• David Michôd for Animal Kingdom 
• Roman Polanski for The Ghost Writer
• David O. Russell for The Fighter
• Lee Unkrich for Toy Story 3

So here's my nominees!

I've also posted my Screenplay choices. I was torn as to what to do with Toy Story 3. I don't really think of sequels as  adapted despite the trending and campaigning that way with Oscars. If sequels are adapted than aren't all original screenplays that are inspired by true stories or real life characters or that riff on other stories adapted? I considered letting it slide since Toy Story 3 needs the other two films to exist. It's not really a stand-alone. But then that we be true of all sequels and all movies based on true stories or inspired by actual characters and so on and, well, it's a slippery slope and virtually 85%-90% of movies become "adapted". So I've stuck to the original definition. Adapted meaning based on previously published work

Acceptance Speech as Campaign

My weekly Oscar article is up at Tribeca Film wherein I'm discussing the value of acceptance speeches to Oscar campaigns. F'rinstance, after Christian Bale's two speeches last weekend at the BFCA & Globes ♫  how you like him now?

Read it at Tribeca Film

Whose acceptance speech do you think did them the most good so far with voters?

This Link Goes To 11

Boston Globe Wesley Morris looks back at Todd Haynes's defiant Poison, now 20 years old but still strong.
Antagony & Ecstasy chooses the 100 Best Films of All Time
Scanners "Moments out of Time" for 2010
Critical Condition Mark shares his dream Oscar ten.
Playbill Another award for Annette Bening. I'd never heard of this one though "The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association's Dorian Awards"

Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, James McAvoy (and others) in X-MEN FIRST CLASS

Hero Complex first photos from the star-studded X-Men: First Class
Movie|Line, prepping for Sundance, reminds us of 13 films that broke out in a big way at the snowy festival.
Boy Culture prompted by Jane Fonda's return has an On Golden Pond flashback. 
Everything I Know names the best stage musicals of 2010 ...and the worst. 
Natasha VC The inimitable Natasha has some words for Robert DeNiro in regards to his Globe speech. 
The Wrap f/x epic John Carter of Mars is coming three months earlier than expected: March 2012. 

Purrfect Anne Hathaway Has Big Stilettos To Fill.

A horror movie serial is opening (at least) every month all over the internet for the next 18 months. It's called News and Rumors and Collective Freakouts Concerning Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. With each new chapter the internet will shiver and tremble, cry out or shake with alarm, fury, disbelief, fear and finally cathartic release. The latest chapter involves two official casting reveals from Nolan himself. The first is that Inception's Tom Hardy will be playing the grotesquely muscular "Bane" (who we last saw onscreen in the fiasco Batman & Robin, 1997) and the second is that Anne Hathaway, she of the backless gowns and "look at me, I'm fabulous!" nakedity in Love and Other Drugs, will be playing Selina Kyle. Selina is, rather famously, Catwoman's alter ego but given Nolan's two previous Batman films we have no indication that we'll actually get Selina as Catwoman, just that we're getting Selina. 

Julie Newmar (the first Catwoman) | Anne Hathaway (the latest)

Remember when Sam Raimi kept setting up Dylan Baker to play The Lizard in his Spider-Man trilogy and never delivered?

I'd say the most we can hope for is that Anne gets to let her bitchy freak side fly a bit. Rachel Getting Married minus the babbling and the "L'Haim!"s divided by Get Smart physicality? She'll probably use a weapon at some point but sadly, it'll probably be a plain ol' gun and not sewing machine claws. What I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't exactly expect her to have nine mystical lives or suit up and throwdown with Christian Bale with pithy one liners and claws out. Maybe she'll get a whip if we're lucky. Nolan likes his female characters as dangerous window dressing or as damsels in distress and on either front Hathaway will be terrific. Or at least more terrific than previous Nolan women.

Believe it or not I don't consider the role too sacred to be recreated. (Someone will reinterpret The Joker before too long, too, even though everyone currently thinks that that'll never happen. It always happens. Trust.) Superheroes and Villians are just from that school of roles that are meant to be constantly reinterpreted, like uh.. .Shakespearean protagonists! Not that the birth of any new feline fatale will ever measure up to Michelle Pfeiffer and that snowy alley with pussies galore.

We'll always hear her roar.