but all I know-oh-oh is down inside i'm lii-iiin-king ♫

Empire exciting project alert! Writer/director Destin Cretton of Short Term 12 fame will guide Michael B Jordan in Just Mercy, a memoir adaptation about a young lawyer who fought for the wrongly convicted
Balder & Dash looks back on the exciting sci-fi curveball Attack the Block (2011)
Variety Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, Evita) receives BFI Tribute
Kenneth in the (212) is rewatching Woody Allen movies and has time for Diane Keaton singing
Cinematic Corner really loves Ant-Man and since I was kind of hard on it, I figure a more positive review should be shared
NPR talks about getting the ants right with the help of "myrmecologists" on Ant-Man
Pop Culture Crazy on Paper Towns (2015) and "Manic Pixie Dream Girl nonsense"
Comics Alliance Green Lantern Corps (2020) may feature Tyrese Gibson as the John Stewart iteration of Green Lantern and yes I feel dirty that I typed a sentence about a movie that's not due for another 5 years and might never even be made. Apologies. We really are living in a sick movie culture at the moment

LOL
Karen Carpenter Died For Your Sins finds Angie Dickinson in a "white mood" 
/Film Jake Gyllenhaal cried when his parents wouldn't let him star in The Mighty Ducks in 1992. Hee!  

Off Cinema (Sort Of)
The Hairpin on kissing and 'disgusting intimacy'. Interesting article but be warned of really gross photos that may or may not be from an X-Files episode that's name dropped. (I love kissing. I once toyed with starting a series on it with this classic post on Jake Gyllenhaal but good god that was a ton of work.)
i09 need some reading suggestions? Here are nominees for the British Fantasy Awards
Boy Culture 30 minutes (!!!) of unseen outtakes from Madonna's classic "Vogue" video have surfaced. It's so weird to see Madonna at the end of takes all dissatisfied with herself for milliseconds. Don't you miss David Fincher making music videos. He should do that inbetween his films
Playbill casting complete ono the West End production of "Photograph 51" starring Nicole Kidman. Her first time on the UK stage since "The Blue Room." Performances start in just 2 months. me want! me want! donate to the site (see sidebar) so I have funds to go see her. *sniffle* 

Showtune to Go...
Feeling oppressed by superheroes of late, I suddenly remembered one of my very favorite songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I seriously love this song (Yeah, I went through a Rocky Horror phase one year as a teenager) and strangely YouTube has very little use for it. Is it because of its lack of fame since it was axed from the original cut of the movie? I found one good clip from a performance in Jacksonville Florida with Ross Frontz and Jessica Alexander doing Brad and Janet... good voices!

BAFTA Nominations: Driver, Marilyn, Soldier, Spy

The BAFTA nominations are out and though we've begun to lose interest in precursors -- 7 days until Oscar nominations are announced -- we should list them anyway! Precursors has two meanings for me. There's the calendar meaning which merely includes all awards that precede the Oscars. But there's a second meaning which is the awards that primarily exist to do just that, precede and thus predict the Oscar. We tend to never lose interest in the precursors that have their own personalities and quickly move on from the others.

BAFTA'S BEST PICTURE. Can you imagine how exciting this year would be if there were only five Oscar nominees again. What the hell would be nominated?

BAFTA's final shortlist is different enough than what we expect Oscar's to look like (Drive and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy both have devout fans but haven't captured that much awards heat in Hollywood) that we are forced into being slightly more interested than usual!

BEST FILM
THE ARTIST - Thomas Langmann
THE DESCENDANTS - Jim Burke, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
DRIVE - Marc Platt, Adam Siegel
THE HELP - Brunson Green, Chris Columbus, Michael Barnathan
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY - Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robyn Slovo

Is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which has won some notice from the guilds and a fair amount of interest at the box office gaining ground towards major Oscar nominations next Tuesday or not? It's one of the big question marks right there along with is the abundant Dragon Tattoo guild love a case of perfect timing or 'crossover appeal and you'll see it at Oscar, too!'

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
MY WEEK WITH MARILYN - Simon Curtis, David Parfitt, Harvey Weinstein, Adrian Hodges
SENNA - Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Manish Pandey
SHAME - Steve McQueen, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Abi Morgan
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY - Tomas Alfredson, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robyn Slovo, Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN - Lynne Ramsay, Luc Roeg, Jennifer Fox, Robert Salerno, Rory Stewart Kinnear

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
ATTACK THE BLOCK - Joe Cornish (Director/Writer)
BLACK POND - Will Sharpe (Director/Writer), Tom Kingsley (Director), Sarah Brocklehurst (Producer)
CORIOLANUS - Ralph Fiennes (Director)
SUBMARINE - Richard Ayoade (Director/Writer)
TYRANNOSAUR - Paddy Considine (Director), Diarmid Scrimshaw (Producer)

Given that there is no Oscar equivalent of this category and few clues in their nominations as to which of these they loved, we're interested to see who wins this one. I suspect it will be Tyrannosaur but I'll admit I'm personally rooting for Attack the Block. I'm not as crazy for it as Michael is but I do appreciate its energy and no budget invention.

Directors, Actors and everything else after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Burning Questions: What Are the Future Cult Films of 2011?

Hey folks. Michael C here to ponder how future movie buffs will view 2011.

When a film is riding high through awards season, racking up the honors and soaking up the prestige, it must feel to its makers like its title is being etched into the face of cinematic history with a hammer and chisel. Yet we know that even the biggest box office champs and awards winners can make that cruel slide into obscurity the same as the cheapest B movie. Likewise, films that managed to slip in and out of theaters without kicking up too much fuss can find popularity and redemption on their way to the dustbin. Looking through the records of cinema years past is a lot like glancing through a high school yearbook. Why, oh why, was I so love with her, who I now see clearly to be pretty but painfully shallow, and what possessed me ignore that knockout, even if she was a little quirky.

So the question I want to find an answer to this week is which under-the-radar 2011 films are most likely headed for large and loyal cult fanbases? I am going to skip the obvious choices of Attack the Block and Warrior, both of which had their cult status secured the instant they failed to catch fire at the box office, and name three still underseen titles which are likely to hold up better than their initial releases would suggest: 

SUBMARINE – Box Office: $467, 602

The initial reaction of much of the film critic community at Richard Ayoad smart, often brutal tale of teenage love and heartbreak was to make brief mention of its impressive visuals, then to simply take roll call of all the other coming-of-age tales it superficially resembled (especially Rushmore). My hunch is that time is going to be very kind to Submarine. It may share themes with other stories of precocious teens in love (how could it not?) yet few such stories ring as true in every harsh, painful and often hilarious detail. And few films of any stripe have such a visually striking creation of time and place. 

THE GUARD – Box Office: $5,338,115

The atmosphere of the modern multiplex is not friendly to the low-key character study. The films where you spend more time smiling quietly than guffawing out loud tend to do better with the low-pressure home video environment when the whole night and half a week’s paycheck isn’t on the line. This will certainly be the case for John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard. The movie's shaggy crime story never comes to much, but as a showcase for Brendan Gleesons rumpled charm and flawless comic timing in the title role it will satisfy many a viewer. 

BELLFLOWER  - Box Office: $168,226

I was not the biggest fan of Evan Glodell’s tale of heartarche, male rage, and Road Warrior obsession. But I can’t deny that it touched a nerve somewhere in the whole mess of flamethrowers, cricket eating, and apocalyptic revenge fantasy. I further can’t deny that there were several stand alone images as memorable as any from 2011 and a mood of pervasive unease that marks Glodell as one to watch. I suspect the home video crowd will be more willing to look past the film’s questionable message, and amateurish lapses to appreciate the raw filmmaking talent contained within. And if Glodell should deliver on his promise in his future projects, forget it. Expect the common refrain among film buffs to be that they were on board with Bellflower before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

Have another candidate for future cult glory? Let me know in the comments. You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film

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Burning Questions: How Does One Rank An Almost Masterpiece?

Michael C. here with a question I can't stop turning over in my mind.

After finalizing my list of the best movies of 2011 I experienced a powerful surge of cinephile guilt when I realized Joe Cornish’s fantastically goofy Attack the Block enjoyed a healthy place on the list while Malick’s The Tree of Life was nowhere to be seen. Certainly this was an unforgivable lapse of taste, if not a dereliction of my duties as a film writer. Tree of Life is about nothing less than - to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams - life, the universe and everything. Even if I had gripes with Tree and thought it only reached its potential in fits and starts, shouldn’t laying a fingertip on such greatness guarantee it a spot? If Olympic athletes can be graded according to degree of difficulty, why not films?

The question, simply put, is how does one rank a flawed masterpiece?

If, by the way, you consider Malick's magnum opus an unqualified success, if you had a religious experience watching butterflies land on Jessica Chastain, then feel free to substitute the name Melancholia, Shame, Margaret or whichever hugely ambitious endeavor you felt stayed stubbornly Earthbound despite its attempts to reach for the stars. But for me, Tree is the one I wrestle with.

One problem with giving points for unfulfilled ambition is that it reinforces the idea that certain movies are superior to others in their very conception. This is the same lazy thinking that leads thudding Oscar bait to be nominated over exciting genre fare year after year. Frost/Nixon is history, Dark Knight is kid stuff. Nominate Frost/Nixon. Ideally both Attack the Block and The Tree of Life start with the same blank slate. 

Of course, the real dilemma is not unfulfilled ambition but those fleeting moments when a film earns all that hyperbolic praise. It would be irresponsible to ignore that Tree of Life frequently presents images that stop the heart and contains stretches that are just about flawless. But those moments come married to endless minutes of Sean Penn stumbling over rocks. Material that felt like Malick cut it down just enough to lose all meaning but kept it in to assure us that it had a purpose when he started. In the end, I was overwhelmed with admiration but my spirit remained curiously unstirred. Wouldn’t the professional thing be to chalk that up to my own problem and rank Tree highly because I recognize the film's potential to move others?

Sean Penn, stumbling around.

I don’t think so. If there is a benefit to the questionable practice of ranking artistic achievements against each other it is to level the playing field between the grand apples and the quirky oranges. What is owed to Malick’s achievement is respect and careful consideration, not genuflection. If in 2011 the film that made the strongest impression on me was the one with furry black aliens with bioluminescent blue teeth then I have to stand up and say so, even if that makes it appear that I have the critical acumen of a 12 year old boy on a sugar high. 

Because when you get down to it all movies from Kubrick and Tarkovsky down to Babe: Pig in the City are after the same thing: a lasting connection with the audience. The test of time is going to be merciless to those films that almost but did not quite achieve greatness, so we may as well be just as merciless in the present. Singin' in Rain was not made with an eye for the list of all-time greats, but there it sits while grand almost-masterpieces like Lost Horizon fade with each year. I would take any random Daffy Duck cartoon over Doctor Zhivago. And let's not forget: In 1998 it wasn't exactly fashionable for a critic to rank a shaggy mystery about a pot-addled bowler above Malick’s Thin Red Line. Yet which of those two films spawned a religion?  

Dudeism

Feel that I am being way too glib with a cinematic masterpiece? Have another example of cinematic emperor's new clothes that needs to be mentioned? Let me know in the comments. You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film

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