Yes No Maybe So: Joaquin Phoenix is "Joker

by Tony Ruggio

The internet’s been aflush with grousing over Todd Phillips’ upcoming Joker, a boiling pot of loyal DC fanboys and girls versus cinephile crusaders. Stir the pot with critics and pundits who have read an early draft of the script (why do that?) and the discourse, pre-discourse, and twee little jokes about discourse have been headache-inducing. I don’t care so much for pearl-clutching over what the film’s worldview might be... judging films on such things, particularly before anyone has seen one minute of finished film, is unfair to art and the place it occupies in pop culture. It’s not a filmmaker’s responsibility to coddle a country or avoid uncomfortable points of view.

That being said, there are pre-existing mixed feelings, and the final trailer only exacerbates them…

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Soundtracking: "Her"

by Chris Feil

Say what you will about its hipster, ukulele verve, but “The Moon Song” from Her is one of the most deserving Best Original Song nominees of the past decade. Some of the reward may be carryover from songwriter Karen O missing out for Where The Wild Things Are’s equally deserving “All is Love”, but both prove essential to the emotional experience of their films. Seriously, Karen O, please make more music for films and not just those from Spike Jonze.

This song is a deceptively simple ditty, a longing love song that slips into the deep melancholy and faint whimsy of the near-future that Jonze creates in the film. It belongs to Her’s manic pixie dream AI Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), but also the romantic imagination of Joaquin Pheonix’s Theodore. Every couple needs a song, even if one of the parties is solely digital.

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And the Skies Are Not Cloudy All Day

by Jason Adams

At several key moments in Jacques Audiard's hymnal The Sisters Brothers time stands still and we watch a curtain gently shift to and fro in the breeze, mid-day sunlight coloring in its folds, making shade where none just was. Take a moment to smell the roses, the film whispers, because hey you never know if and or when you might get shot right in your face... 

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Beauty vs Beast: Running Mates

Jason Adams from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" query -- when I saw it written in my calendar that today is the 25th anniversary of The Fugitive my first thought is I must have done that movie for this series before, but a quick skim tells me I hadn't, and so here we are! I vividly remember The Fugitive coming out in the summer of 1993, a banner year for this movie-lover - I had gone to see Jurassic Park a dozen times by then and I needed something fresh and new to feed this newly awoken beast inside me; Harrison Ford leaping out of a train-crash did the trick.

I went to see the film several times after that, but save a few minutes here and there on TV I don't think I have seen it since? Still it's an easy enough film to remember, especially after we spent that entire year's awards season getting the clip of Tommy Lee Jones saying "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse" hammered into our heads over and over and over, until he got his Oscar for it the next spring.

bike trails

PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back we had you tackling PTA's The Master - turns out that Joaquin Pheonix holds that title, taking a precise 2/3rds of your vote. Said Devin D:

"This performance truly cemented Joaquin Phoenix as one of the irrefutable greats, and it was very nice that Philip Seymour Hoffman got to work yet again before his untimely passing with Paul Thomas Anderson in a role so sizable."

Beauty vs Beast: Live Without Masters

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" for you people to vote yourselves silly with -- did you know that today would have been the 51st birthday of the great Philip Seymour Hoffman? He's been gone over four years now and I ache to think of all the performances we've missed out on. No I wouldn't have given him that Oscar over Heath Ledger either, but he wasn't even nominated for the greatest film of the past two decades (that would be Synecdoche New York) so the injustices, they pile up.

But we're here to talk about another film, one I have come hard around on since its release - I was cool to Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master in 2012 but my affection for it has grown with time; I'm pretty keen on it now, with its medicinal greens and hard elbows. It's only right, it taking some time - it's not the sort of film that hugs you, at least not without wanting something back, making it much like its leading men...

surveys

PREVIOUSLY Naturally the actress prevailed and then some with last week's Double Indemnity poll - crossing Barabra Stanwyck was never a good idea, not when she's got that silver pistol in her pocketbook. Said cal roth:

"That was so easy... I love Stanwyck and MacMurray reunion in There's Always Tomorrow. I love Stanwyck, the most versatile movie goddess of all time. She could go from a Hawks screwball to two masterful perfomances in Sirk melodramas to westerns by Samuel Fuller and Anthony Mann (the director who got her best best performance ever, in The Furies)."