The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Tang Wei acting againPop Matters Jane Fonda is here to talk fitness -- not the movies! Though the first question does both. Interesting interview from Matt Mazur. Carpetbagger Sundance has a new 'it' girl Felicity Jones Asia Scene visits Tang Wei on the set of her new film Nicks Flick Picks kicks off his Best of 2010. Yay! The Hollywood Reporter Anthony Hopkins for the Hitchcock bio? Ewww. Pop Matters "10 things i'm already sick of in 2011" heh. some people can't ever be pleased. Kenneth in the 212 Jake Gyllenhaal on the Q train. I love seeing celebrities in the subway. It's so rare. One spots them far more frequently above ground here in NYC. Your Movie Buddy what... you don't wanna stay in the Star Gazer Suite from Blue Valentine? Why the hell not?
Finally, have you been reading all the pieces about whether or not The King's Speech can defeat The Social Network? Some subjects just take on a life of their own whether or not they're yet relevant. Some say it can, some say it can't but you know what I think it all comes down to? What their nomination tallies are like come Tuesday morning and how large The King's Speech's box office (and roughly parallel, the audience fervor) grows. These are the principle reasons why I haven't jumped into the debate. The competition for Oscar is an entirely different race, after the nominations. Don't you think?
It's 2 days and 15 hours or so until Oscar nominations! Late tomorrow we'll do final predictions but until then, the FiLM BiTCH Awards continue wherein I share my own ballot of "best of the year".
Rapunzel lays down the law
If you read the top ten list, you already know my Animated Feature finalists (though I cheated a bit on the grounds of: if Oscar can keep changing the number of nominees, I can adjust as I see fit, too!). Each one of my nominees Toy Story 3, How To Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist and Tangled has at least one other nomination to show for it in another category, too (you can see a tally of nominations thus far at the bottom of the sound categories).
Visual Effects You know what's funny? My single favorite visual effect of the year is the Winklevii in The Social Network but just as you can't really nominate a film for costume design just because it has one good dress, I didn't end up nominating it in that category
I generally applaud the use of visual effects as a supporting mechanism rather than as the goddamn raison d'etre of a film's existence. And it also just missed because as I was drawing up my charts I suddenly started giggling about how indulgent it all seemed. Why cast twins when you can spend millions playing with your technological toys?! Maybe this is why True Grit just barely misses my makeup nomination, too. Did they really need to go to that much work to make Barry Pepper hideous when he's a strong enough actor to sell dastardly and dangerous without any false grody teeth? I'm just thinking aloud here. Join in the debate at any time.
Dakota self applies in The RunawaysHere are my Visual Effects and Makeup nominees. [You'll have to scroll down a bit to get past the wall of Black Swan posters in the unfinished categories.]
If you're wondering why Tim Burton'sEyesore in Wonderland is nowhere to be found it's because I think it's overworked in virtually every department. I don't mean to impugn the significant talents of all involved -- and you should skip this paragraph if you're tired of me bagging on it (I'm tired of me, too) but the film will not go away -- but it just doesn't work. It's probably a simple matter of direction but when makeup artists know that Johnny Depp will oversell the "mad" part of "mad hatter", for example, do they than have to work so hard that even an actor playing it straight would look crazy in their designs? Wouldn't something lower key have provided helpful balance, even whilst remaining within the basic register of INSANITY.
And when you choose to make Anne Hathaway of all people unattractive, and it's not part of the character concept that she be so, I just can't go with you to the places they're going. White wig, white gown and...black lipstick? I'm dying here.
Anyway... I prefer makeup just like I prefer my visual f/x, supporting the narrative brilliantly whilst only drawing attention to themselves if they're the main show and should.
When I lived in the northern Brooklyn, I used to hop on the G Train to visit the Museum of Moving Images in Queens with some regularity. I haven't been in years but they've redone the museum and they're holding special events and courting press. A few days back Spike Jonze interviewed David O. Russell about The Fighter. You can listen to the whole hour long event if you've got the time. But I thought I'd share two weird bits and two interesting anecdotes if you don't have the full hour.
David O. Russell and Spike Jonze discuss filmmaking
2. About 34 minutes into the conversation Rosie Perez interrupts the interview because she has to leave the event early but doesn't want to leave without telling Russell how much she loved The Fighter "I laughed. I cried". There's just no mistaking that voice! (And there's one Oscar ballot to consider.)
Two anecdotes of interest
1. David O. Russell really really really loves Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). He claims to have seen it over 50 times. He talks about his change of heart with the movie.
When it first came out -- we were a little bit of group with Wes and Sofia [Coppola]. Wes shared the script with me and I didn't really get it. I was like 'Wes, I don't know if you know this but there's no 375th street in New York. He says "No, I'm making up New York."
When I saw the film I still didn't get it, still didn't really get it and I was a huge fan of Rushmore. The funny thing is how your feelings can change about cinema. So if you don't like any of my movies just give it ten years. [Laughter] Ten years later my son he loves The Royal Tenenbaums and I gotta tell you I just fell in love with it. I see so much brilliance in it. I think it's Gene Hackman's greatest performance and it plays constantly in my car.
He goes on to explain that he has a tv in his car and that he watches the movie while driving "Well, there's a lot of traffic" he says getting a big laugh from the room.
2. The second bit that stuck out for me is obvious but I had never really processed it. Originally Darren Aronofsky (who we were just discussing) was attached and Russell, in explaining what he was drawn to in the material, reveals just how different that film would have been. That's a big "duh" but it struck me nonetheless.
Right now what interests me most is something that's very real and emotional and raw and fascinating in a way that certain characters or people can be. Like, that's an amazing character. That's someone i could watch or look at or listen to for a long time. That's what interests me the most, characters that make my mouth hang open like "WHO ARE YOU?"
When I saw this family in their photo album the mother, you know, with the sisters. Darren's script didn't really have the mother and the sisters as much or the girlfriend. The women were much smaller and it was much more dark about Dicky's dark crime stuff.
David O. Russell with "the sisters"
Now.
Just try and imagine The Fighter without Melissa Leo's energy-sucking presence or Amy Adams' softbodied but hard living bartender. Try to imagine it without the sisters???. I mean, that film... NO! Russell returns to this line of thought much later in the interview when he reveals what a godsend the movie was for him; Mark Wahlberg was returning the favor bringing this to him since he brought Three Kings and Huckabees to Mark.
I had had a bumpy few years of writing many things and tying myself up in knots. That's hard. That can happen. I was happy to have a simple thing that I saw how it could be done, I had a clear take on it. Mark is very loyal to me and very much a protector of me so I knew I wasn't coming in somewhere where I was not going to be able to do what I wanted to do. That's the only way i know how to do things. So I came in and said this is how i see it, this is how I want to do it. They cleared the way and let me do that, the sisters and the mom and the girlfriend being more prominent. They were there in the earlier versions but barely there. They weren't pivotal.
I'm so glad Aronofsky departed. We got this movie instead AND we got Black Swan. It was literally a win/win for moviegoers.
Screenshots from the 20th minute and 10th second of 2010 films as we close out the year through awards season. [I may be a smidge off on this one, timing wise, as my counter was all knullade but this'll do.]
Helt utrop!
That's damn amazing. Every godforsaken year on his birthday he gets a framed flower in the post. Who is sending them? Why? The answers are in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
I really am trying to get a move on with my Film Bitch Awards. If you're new to The Film Experience that's this site's annual awards. We've been doing it for (gulp) 11 years... Each year I promise myself to spend more time listening to the movies since my eyes are so greedy and always want to watch watch watch. But movies are not only eye candy. They can also provide significant aural pleasure.
Some films that sound gooooooooood
So I've now announced the nominees in all the sound categories. mixing, editing, original song, original score and my own special category "best adapted or song score" which is a highly necessary category given that so many films now use a mix-tape approach rather than relying on one person to provide the music. This weekend we'll try to wrap all the other "standard" i.e. Oscar categories -- as well as do final Oscar predictions -- since that's all gotta be out of the way before Oscar nomination morning. (I don't expect my lineups to match Oscar's much in sound and score but they rarely do so I won't be hurt too much on Tuesday.)
Come back and let me know what you think of the soundscapes of movies like Black Swan, I Am Love, Salt, The Social Network, The Ghost Writer, Burlesque and many more in the comments. (My ears are not as well trained as my eyes but each year I think I listen a little better. Progress)
After the Oscar nomination brouhaha winds down late next week, we'll hit the "fun" categories like Diva, Villain, Best Action Sequence. You know how we do.
Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 12:31AM 
Tang Wei acting againPop Matters Jane Fonda is here to talk fitness -- not the movies! Though the first question does both. Interesting interview from Matt Mazur.
Finally, have you been reading all the pieces about whether or not The King's Speech can defeat The Social Network? Some subjects just take on a life of their own whether or not they're yet relevant. Some say it can, some say it can't but you know what I think it all comes down to? What their nomination tallies are like come Tuesday morning and how large The King's Speech's box office (and roughly parallel, the audience fervor) grows. These are the principle reasons why I haven't jumped into the debate. The competition for Oscar is an entirely different race, after the nominations. Don't you think?
