Best of 2012: Nathaniel's Honorable Mentions

We're reached the End of Watch. No, not the movie of that title though we'll soon get to it. But the invisible line I have to draw on my movie calendar between Now and Then. I've squeezed more screenings in this past month than I probably should have for a clear head but I must finally cut myself off. Now is the time to take stock and share favorites. The Film Bitch Awards have begun with my choices for Best Screenplays now posted. "But, wait, where's the top ten?" you ask. We're getting there. But first we start right here...

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? (In No Particular Order)
No movie seemed more in my personal wheelhouse this year that Joe Wright's sumptuous ANNA KARENINA but in truth it divided me. lots more movie-lovin' after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Screenplays of '12. Pg 12. "Lincoln"

I didn't forget about my page 12 sharing in honor of 2012 but the year slipped away from me. Let's resume, at least in brief, for a moment from LINCOLN as scripted by Tony Kushner based in part on two chapters from "A Team of Rivals" (a book I'm continually hearing great things about).

Tony Kushner speaking about Lincoln at Harvard

Two soldiers fasten a flag to the halyards. Lincoln moves into places; as the crowd applauds, he takes a sheet of paper from inside his hat and glances at it. Then he looks up.

        LINCOLN
The part assigned to me is to raise
the flag, which, if there be no
fault in the machinery, I will do,
and when up, it will be for the
people to keep it up.

He puts the paper away. The audience waits, expecting more.

        LINCOLN (CONT'D)
That's my speech.

He smiles at them. They applaud, some laughing.  As Lincoln turns the crank, hoisting the flag, a solo trumpet plays "We Are Coming Father Abra'am" and the audience joins in.

That's a really short scene in Lincoln but a telling one since it gives Daniel Day-Lewis one of many opportunities to demonstrate the President's refreshing sense of humor. A good sense of humor goes a long way in sweeping out the cobwebs from the Great Man Hagiography that so many biographical films become.

three more celebrated screenplays I'm also celebrating today

I too love this screenplay and it's one of my own nominees for BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY just posted! My ballot for BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY is also up for this year's Film Bitch Awards kick off. Click over and see what's nominated from soulful indie dramas like Aya DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere and curios like Sean Baker's Starlet through to big budget superhero epics like The Avengers (no really) and certain Oscar players like that controversial Zero Dark screenplay we already talked about. 

You Link Me. You Really Link Me!

The Wrap Sally Field (Lincoln) is the talk of the Palm Springs festival with her lively speech.
The Playlist has a clip of the new Pixar short The Blue Umbrella but be forewarned. It's really not much bigger than a new film still it's so short.
EW in another break with tradition Seth MacFarlane rather than an AMPAS official will be announcing the Oscar nominations on Thursday morning with the requisite actress (this year: Emma Stone)

Letterbox'd Vadim Rizov isn't terribly impressed with Zero Dark Thirty
Pajiba has amusing standards when it comes to red band trailers. (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters)
The Advocate promises that actress Busy Phillips is as awesome as she appears to be. (Michelle Williams has always had such good taste!)
Slate's movie club beginswith Dana Stevens, Wesley Morris, Stephanie Zachareck and Keith Phipps talking up Zero Dark Thirty and Django and moral ambiguity in film
The Carpetbagger talks to Baltasar Kormakur about The Deep

It turns out that there is a reason most directors don’t film shipwrecks in the open water”

Ha.

Smash!
29 DAYS UNTIL "SMASH" RETURNS!'

I'll be recapping as I did last year. I'm not crazy about this sneak peek which sadistically continues to pretend that Megan Hilty is NOT the true star of Smash (LIES. ALL LIES). She's not even #2 anymore according to this trailer which seems to suggest a season all about American Idols Jennifer Hudson  and Katharine McPhee. Meanwhile the cast album of "Bombshell", the stage musical within the tv musical series, will be out in mid February. If Hilty doesn't get the Marilyn solo numbers on the "cast album" than they shan't have my moneys! 

A Proposal For Kathryn Bigelow's Next Picture

I snapped this pic in my last hotel room and forgot to share it.

I lol'ed like a crazy person at the time alone in a hotel bathroom because my brain immediately went here:

Breaking: KATHRYN BIGELOW to direct Invitation To Tea starring Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Joan Plowright and Dame Julie Andrews. 

No matter what the plot is. I'm in.

Oscar likes to reward people for 'playing against type' but they wouldn't reward Bigelow for doing so in a million years. There's a reason she's the only woman who ever won Best Director (Jane Campion & Sofia Coppola movies are way too girly for Oscar wins) and will be the first to win a second directing nomination as soon as this Thursday.

Favorite Trios! Three Days...

...until Oscar nominations arrive. So let's celebrate with our three favorite threesomes trios this year.

3. The Crown Princes in Brave 
I love Hamish, Hubert & Harris primarily because I share their weaknesses for pastries. If I had seen the pastry before them I would have been doomed to a life of furry hibernation. Cast a spell on a pastry and I will be magically defeated. Actually, even without a spell, a pastry will defeat me. Bonus points: we need more ginger characters in the movies. Apparently redheads are going to be gone in 60-75 years time, genetically speaking, so stock up on them now!

2. Royals + 1  in A Royal Affair
King (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), Queen (Alicia Vikander) and Their Personal Physician (Mads Mikkelsen)
Doctor Streunsee bills himself as the royal's personal physician but he's really more of a political adviser with a pinch of therapist / gynecologist when it comes to this royal marriage. This movie is good. See it.

1. "The B Faces" in Bachelorette Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), and Katie (Isla Fisher) are
coke-snorting, bed-hopping, mean girls and though they're cruel to each other and especially to their fourth wheel Becky (Rebel Wilson), the one who is no longer a bachelorette, they're actually friends with shared messy history and statis problems. That's an uncomfortable sometime truth of long-term friendships that you don't often see dramatized in movies. Anyway, we can't get enough of them. Or at least we suspect we can't. Doesn't it seem like the type of movie we'll all know by heart in ten years time?