"I Have a Link!" "Yes You Do."

The Pixar Blog Toy Story 3 gets a huge billboard in LA.
Basket of Kisses John Barry, oft-Oscared composer passed away at 77. RIP. True story: When I first became obsessed with the movies in the mid 80s, Out of Africa was one of the first LP film scores I ever bought.
The Telegraph Should you revisit beloved Disney films from childhood? Retrospectives have Tim Robey wondering. I've been contemplating revisiting the Disney oeuvre myself.
Your Movie Buddy plays an Oscar nominee name game. Love the finale.
The House Next Door 'The Conversations' takes on Coen Bros True Grit What's the hashtag for this? Oh yes, #longreads
Cinema Blend offers up a Sundance Sales Guide. I've been waiting for someone to compile this rather than report solely on them as they happen. Thank you!
Kenneth in the (212) lusts after Henry Cavill, our new Superman. Agreed that Cavill (of The Tudors fame) is a fine specimen but Brandon Routh was so perfect in Superman Returns. And his recent cameo in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was so funny that I longed ridiculously for him to take back up the cape.
Boy Culture I've been so consumed with awards season I keep missing other stuff. Like Geri from The Facts of Life coming out of the closet. She can't even walk straight!

It's Bertie's World. You're Just Living In It.
Playbill The King's Speech was conceived as a play and may head to the stage.
Gawker The Best Picture nominees in Legos. Figures that TKS is the most boring one (but I love the one for 127 Hours.)

"why should i waste my time listening to you?" "BECAUSE I HAVE A VOICE"

Finally, Tom Shone, a critic I personally love, has an unfortunate affection for The King's Speech. But his piece about the Oscar race upheaval and the falsity of projected versions of Oscar as either old fuddy duddies or young hepcats is fun.

The academy haven't lost their taste for Oscar bait. They just haven't been let near a healthy enough specimen. They're like drunks who've managed to stay dry for several years not because they have lost their taste for alcohol but because nobody has offered them a drink.

Though I warn you: this may be a depressing read if you've been convincing yourself that the Academy has changed due to the last few winners.

20:10 "all dragons have a limited number of shots"

Screen capture from the 20th minute and 10th second of How To Train Your Dragon
(or thereabouts. I'm not so sure this VLC time counter works properly grrrr)

"How many does a Gronkol have?"

It's less than 19 hours until Oscar nominations!!! Which animated feature do you think will place alongside How To Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3? It seems like a coin toss doesn't it between Tangled (the commerce and corporate tradition votes), The Illusionist (the art and international votes) and Despicable Me (the scrappy upstarts, comedy votes)? Well, a coin toss if you have a... uh... three sided coin.

Here's my chart of final Oscar predictions and the post in which I ask the big questions about uncertainties tomorrow morning.

20:10 Truer words were never spoken (by Toys)

Screen capture: 20th minute and 10th second of Toy Story 3 (with the dialogue immediately preceding this image).

It's nice. See! The door has a rainbow on it.

Tee hee. Love the basic causal evidence cited (rainbows -- duh!)  and the line delivery is also rich. Don't you love Wallace Shawn as "Rex"? Def' one of the best Toy Story characters. And isn't it fun that the screaming monkey is first introduced so innocuously while Bonnie pours love at him?

Speaking of Bonnie, our first glimpse of Sunnyside is also her introduction.

Is this BONNIE!?

She is beyond adorable. Plus she plays well with toys. They do a lot of improv. (Tangent: Why is shyness so endearing in kids and pets and so annoying in adults?) How can anything/anyone be so cute rendered in pixels?

poll by twiigs.com

(Are you enjoying this return freeze frame series?)

Eye Candy: Visual Effects, Makeup and Animation

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's Eyesore 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.

once again the nominees

And finally we end with a Black Swan makeup tutorial because it's amusing and we loved the Avatar tutorial this girl did last year.

She just wants to be perfect!

Best of 2010: Prophets, Toys, Fish Tanks and Rabbit Holes

Previously: Honorable Mentions
(Short on time so the second half has to wait. Apologies.)

Part 1
The Film Experience loves nothing more than being transported by the movies. The year's top dozen (a baker's dozen) took us deep inside French prisons, soared over Viking villages, danced into British projects and stumbled into Australian crime dens. This year's best films wandered 'round places both far flung (wealthy Italian estates) and right next door (New York City's Lincoln Center wherein a certain ballerina frets and pirouettes and transforms).

Wherever the year's best took us, we wanted to go. In fact, we're ready to go again. Just let us grab that unpublished manuscript and a treasured childhood toy for the journey. And, oops... just -- updating facebook status. Okay, now we're ready. Let's go!

[mild very vague spoilers on The Ghost Writer and Fish Tank]

RUNNERS UP

Un prophète dir. Jacques Audiard
[Sony Pictures Classics, Feb 26th]
Last year's shouldawontheforeignoscar contender treads excessively familiar ground patiently, biding its time. Malik (breakthrough sensation Tahar Rahim) may be a criminal savant but Jacques Audiard is the alpha dog in this dank dangerous racially charged prison (and outside of it as well). The French auteur's always expressive cinematic voice makes full use of both image and sound. They flicker and pulse as if in whispered conversation, haunting each other with their most awful details. Malik's horrifying character arc from remorseful killer to skilled death-dealer is so gradual that you're as surprised as he when you fully grasp the new criminal ecosystem when exiting this prison.

Toy Story 3 dir. Lee Unkrich
[Disney/Pixar, June 18th]

This latest and hopefully last Toy Story adventure expertly capitalizes on nostalgia for itself. (Please don't make another one Pixar as you'll taint the beautiful full circle affect of this one.) Scene for scene TS3 is maybe both the best comedy and the best tearjerker of the year.  The only reason it's not in the top ten -- shush, I realize it's supposed to be -- is that its deep comforts and emotional potency are inarguably the product of 15 years of other movies and cozy familiarity with the characters. Its considerable charm and four hankie finale is not exactly derived from this movie itself. In other words, it's got an enormous advantage over practically everything else that came out in 2010. It's like when everyone declared the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith so epic and moving and pretended that the movie didn't suck while it borrowed its emotional affect from the Force being with us for 30 years. The difference here (he quickly adds) is that Toy Story 3 is a marvelous movie in its own right: inventive, hilarious, beautifully staged.

Rabbit Hole dir. John Cameron Mitchell
[Lions Gate, Dec 17th]
This is a refreshingly unhistrionic portrait of grief and those are rare beasts. Its unassuming strengths, and maybe that hushed release in the noisiest of movie seasons, might be the thing(s) preventing it from breaking out. Which, come to think of it, is reflective of Becca herself (a great Nicole Kidman) as she's always getting in her own way. David Lindsay-Abaire's expert screenplay gets so many things about grief right. It understands that those most in need of comfort often push it away, it gets the way righteous anger leaks out as freeform hostility, and it sees that strangers can offer clarity and windows to healing that loved ones, with their messy intimacies, cannot. This might not sound like fun but it's sometimes bracingly funny. Rabbit Hole begins with a shot of Becca opening a bag of soil while she tensely gardens. Mitchell's sensitive direction and the fine cast do the work, but they trust you to notice their eventual flowering.

Top Ten List 

How To Train Your Dragon dir. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders
[Dreamworks, March 26th]
Here's to happy miracles. When was the last time you saw a movie boy rewarded for using his smarts and intuition and accepting his peaceful nature? When was the last time the hero of an epic was a pacifist rather than a warrior? I won't hold my breath waiting for the answer. (Gandhi?) How to Train Your Dragon figures out how to have it both ways of course (this is mainstream cinema) and like Tangled, it trips on nervous bids at popularity: why do the kids speak with modern American snark while all the adults have Scottish accents? I haven't a clue! But its flight sequences are as magical as Avatar's and Toothless, the dread Night Fury is a brilliantly executed character. This is a personal choice but this movie arrived in my life right when I needed it. Our top tens ought to be a personal, else why make them? Dragon might be the best hug-your-pet movie since Babe (1995); it's not perfect but that'll do.

The Ghost Writer dir. Roman Polanski
[Summit, March 19th]
We never learn the name of the ghost (Ewan McGregor) hired to shadow and write about a politician under investigation (Pierce Brosnan) and why should we? The movie also plays it coy. Polanski's amazing sleight of hand alternately flashes us a political satire, a nihilistic comedy, a murder thriller and maybe even a drama about having a really shitty job for which no rewards or public acknowledgement will ever come. The Ghost Writer has memorably sinister interiors filled with sharp angles and splashes of blood red color. The exteriors are no safer as the endless stormy weather, slick streets and bodies washed ashore portend. Can a whole film be a red herring? It all builds towards the year's most brilliant ending, a vanishing act, a negation.


Fish Tank dir. Andrea Arnold
[IFC Films, January 15th]
Arnold's sophomore feature follows an angry British girl Mia (Katie Jarvis) around in her grim daily life as she hates on her family, picks fights with the neighbors, crushes on her mom's new man (Michael Fassbender, predictably excellent), and dreams of becoming a professional hiphop dancer. There are plentiful movies about downtrodden inarticulate characters each year but few this acutely observed. Even when Fish Tank risks going off the rails by willfully slamming into metaphor (the horse) or veering towards the edge of genre territory (an abduction) it works a peculiar beguiling magic. Just when you think the movie can't possibly resolve the gangly awkward impulses of its teen protagonist towards any satisfying conclusion, it stages a farewell dance that's both perfectly surreal and absurdly mundane. Wow.

..CONTINUE TO THE COMPLETE TOP TEN