With This Post, I Thee Link

Daily Mail the rumors are heating up yet again that Jamie Bell and Evan Rachel Wood are tying the knot. Remember when he was a little boy dancer (Billy Elliott) and she was a little girl anorexic (Once and Again)?!? If they have a baby soon I will officially feel as old as Luise Rainer who turns 102 this week! OMG. 
The Playlist Steven Soderbergh's The Side Effects will star Blake Lively (yes, they're still trying to make her happen), Jude Law and Channing Tatum. Funny how Soderbergh is more prolific than ever despite all that "retirement announcement" nonsense.
La Daily Musto hears a crazy story I've never heard about Rosemary's Baby. 

MUBI details the current controversy about The Artist appropriating a piece of Vertigo's score. Kim Novak is really really upset about it.
THR ...thinks she's taking her complaints way too far. 
The Playlist Yay. Katee Sackhoff, who we're always rooting for since she has more charisma than many whole casts combined, gets a big movie role... albeit in a tired franchise. Ready for another Riddick movie?
Scene Stealers Kansas City critics pick The Descendants as best picture (yes, I'm done writing up critics awards. Sorry!) and the NSFC may have given them the courage to go with Kirsten Dunst as Best Actress for Melancholia. I don't mean to suggest that smaller critics groups can't find their own courage but it seems fairly obvious on a year to year basis that a win for an off kilter choice from one of the three biggies (NYFCC, NSFC, or LAFCA) can often result in a chain link of appreciation. It's just too bad that Dunst's heat came so very late in the game.

I can't believe this is online but this is my favorite 2 and a ½ minutes of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ... the film that may finally cause all Oscar pundits, professional and amateur, to accept that Oscar is no longer wary of remakes, even instantaneous ones that no one has any excuse for making but for money.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Opening Titles from Onur Senturk on Vimeo.

Off Cinema
Tech Crunch more web-only TV series with bigger stars are coming.
Insider Chris Colfer and Lea Michele will stay on Glee somehow. I'd say "uh oh" but for the continual shark jumping of that show. It defies the very notion of shark jumping since there are sharks in each episode and this season... "Sharks" with "Jets". [groan. sorry]
Broadway Buzz Alan Cumming gets remarried to his man. Tells Rick Santorum to eat it. 

"Melancholia" it is for the NSFC

Bucking 2011-focused critical tradition thus far, which has divvied up the best picture prizes between The Tree of Life, The Descendants, Drive and The Artist. The National Society of Film Critics have gone with Lars von Trier's epic sci-fi depression metaphor Melancholia (TFE's top ten list) for their Best Film. 2011 precursor season continues to be a delight with its wide spread of honors. We're especially pleased for Kirsten Dunst though their backing comes far too late to improve her neglible Oscar traction. But Oscar isn't everything. This is a beautiful way for the resurgent actress to close out 2011 which will undoubtedly be a pivotal year for her career. 

The year began with the afterglow of terrific reviews for All Good Things (interview) and peaked with a Cannes win for Best Actress. Meanwhile with goodwill for her career finally restored, she lined up or filmed a completed work on a handful of new movies. Well done Kiki!

Picture Melancholia (ru: The Tree of Life and A Separation)
Director Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life (ru: Martin Scorsese for Hugo and Lars von Trier for Melancholia)
Actress Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia (ru: Yun Jung-Hee for Poetry and Meryl Streep)
Actor Brad Pitt, for Moneyball and The Tree of Life (ru: Gary Oldman and Jean Dujardin)

Supporting Actress Jessica Chastain, for Tree of Life, Take Shelter and The Help  (ru: Jeannie Berlin for Margaret and Shailene Woodley for The Descendants)
Supporting Actor Albert Brooks, Drive (ru: Christopher Plummer and Patton Oswalt)
Screenplay A Separation (ru: Moneyball and Midnight in Paris)
Non Fiction Film Cave of Forgotten Dreams (ru: The Interrupters and Into the Abyss)
Foreign Film A Separation (ru: Mysteries of Lisbon and Le Havre)
Experimental Film Ken Jacobs for "Seeking the Monkey King"

Film Heritage Prizes
• BAMcinématek for its complete Vincente Minnelli retrospective
• Lobster Films, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema for the restoration of the color version of George Méliès’s “A Trip to the Moon.”  
• New York’s Museum of Modern Art's Weimar Cinema retrospective
• Flicker Alley's box set “Landmarks of Early Soviet Film.”
• Criterion Collection's DVD package “The Complete Jean Vigo.” 

Oklahoma & Phoenix & The Supporting Actress Traffic Jam

The Artist, Albert Brooks, Michelle Williams and The Tree of Life's cinematography continue to assert dominance in the regional critics prizes as two more circles & societies weigh in. How long until we have 60 US critics organizations, one for each state plus a handful of redundant consolidating regional groups and another handful of national groups?

11 perfs by 9 women have divvied up Critics Supporting Actress prizes in North America

Meanwhile Supporting Actress --which is a real clusterf*** to predict with 6 women doing superbly in precursors and 2 more super lauded performances waiting eagerly for a miracle stumble from one of those 6 -- continues to be a total free for all among critics groups as I've illustrated with this map of the prizes thus far... so exciting! Would that more races would inspire this much healthy difference of opinion, art being subjective and all.

I've been discussing the Best Supporting Actress race with other pundits recently and I'm finding it amusing how "obvious" everyone claims it is despite no one agreeing on who is out front or who gets dumped. How then, can it be obvious? Even the statistics don't solve this equation as will be noted after the jump...

Click to read more ...

OFCS Nominations: The Drive of Life

The Online Film Critics Society is the latest group to chime in with their nominations for the best of 2011. They'll announce the winners on January 2nd but because they're a big group we deigned to feature their nominees this year. As in most years there are a couple of eyebrow raising choices (I really can't handle Editing and Screenplay nominations for We Need To Talk About Kevin! Shoot me now... with bow and arrow if you must.) but their Best Cinematography list is just... well, we should only pray we get an Oscar field that beautiful, that acclaimed, that challenging, that perfect, that War Horse evading.

The Tree of Life led their field of contenders with seven nominations including two for acting (Brad Pitt was honored there,  not for Moneyball) with Drive in hot pursuit with six. And for what seems like the first time in ages, Martha Marcy May Marlene was not left out in the cold, picking up three nominations including Original Screenplay for Sean Durkin (recently interviewed).

Full list of nominations with a few thoughts after the jump.

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Utah Picks "Drive", Black Film Critics Love "Pariah", And More...

Well, look at that!

Critics group finally veered off the three well paved roads of Best Picture honors (The Artist, The Descendants and The Tree of Life were the only previous films named "Best Picture" by a US critics group. No, the NBR is not a critics group). Utah named Drive the Best Picture of 2011 and the Black Film Critics Circle went for The Help. 

Their love for the film which earned two additional prizes also broke up the clean sweep by The Tree of Life in cinematography. Emmanuel Lubezki's god like talents are truly majestic (and have been jaw dropping for a long time prior to The Tree of Life) but it's nice to see another artistic photographic achievement honored, in this case Newton Thomas Sigel's evocative night time cityscapes and theatrically dreamy interiors. Sigel has done rich work before, particularly on X2: X-Men United and Three Kings, but nothing as fine as his work on Drive. He's never been honored by his own guild or Oscar so hopefully that'll happen for him this year since he's done his best work ever.

Consider this prize a wee detour as there are more honors to come for Lubezki, though, surely. Lubezki might actually win the Oscar this year... though I'm trying not to hope for it too emphatically as Oscar has a way of ignoring his genius.

Full list of Utah's prizes and two more critics groups after the jump...

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