Visual Index ~ Mad Max: Fury Road "Best Shots"

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, our last until October, we're looking at George Miller's thrilling return to his signature franchise Mad Max: Fury Road. It's the kind of movie that, as we just discussed on the "best of summer podcast," really goes the extra mile. And we're not talking about Imperator Furiosa's detour to "the green place" though that's well out of her way as drives go. George Miller completely outdid himself with this saturated, explosive, delirious, feminist action film.

One shot won't do of course which is why "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" is a communal experience. We each choose one and hopefully it adds up to a survey of a movie's crucial inspired images. My piece will be up late tomorrow before your host heads out for the Toronto International Film Festival and because this movie totally deserves an extra day. If you meant to participate and forgot, you have 24 more hours to get your choice in. I'll add more entries if they come in...

MAD MAX FURY ROAD
Directed by George Miller (Mad Max, Lorenzo's Oil). Cinematography by John Seale (The English Patient, Witness). Starring Charlize Theron & Tom Hardy
Click on the 10 images to read the 12 corresponding articles

Miller has made his subtext text in this image...
-The Entertainment Junkie 

 Despite being an intensely colorful film, there are actually just two main colors in the film’s palette...
-Magnificent Obsession 

 I was not prepared to be blown away by the awesomeness...
-Jija 

Given the sprawling vistas and circus craziness that are the film's bread and butter, my pick for best shot is almost idiotically off-book:
-Antagony & Ecstacy 

For all the images incongruous potency and humor, it's also a rich story point, introducing us to "the stuff" that got stolen and humanizing it.
-The Film Experience 

It just hit me so hard in the cinema I legit gasped...
-Cinematic Corner 

Movie Motorbreath - VIDEO ENTRY

Throughout Fury Road, character is defined by action; how we react to it and what we do after.
-Zitzelfilm 

Anguish never looked so beautiful...
-I Want to Believe

The grand spectacle that Miller created in that vast, unforgiving, and beautiful desert wasteland...
-Sorta That Guy

a palpable sense of the scale of the action...
-Film Actually

The movie is full of scenes that reveal themselves with a remarkable efficiency
-Awards Circuit 

AGAIN. You have 24 more hours to get your "best shot" in before we close out this episode late Tuesday night before TIFF travels begin!

Podcast: Top Tens of Summer 2015

For this week's edition of the podcast, Katey, Joe, Nathaniel and Nick reunite to share their top tens of summer movie season. We allowed ourselves full movies, single moments, general themes. It's a free form top ten roundelay. 

Topics include but are not limited to... 
Mad Max: Fury Road, I'll See You In My Dreams, Jurassic World, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Diary of a Teenage Girl, Amy, Trainwreck, A Little Chaos, Ricki and the Flash, Joss Whedon, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, Jada Pinkett Smith, Andie MacDowell, footwear, camera-shaking music, counterprogramming and more...

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments. Share your top ten anything from the summer movie season!

Summer Top Tens

12 Questions: DVD & BluRay Releases

Twelve questions for you to answer (comment party!) inspired by this week's new DVD releases. Ready? 

7 Minutes Heist movie starring Jason Ritter, Kris Kristofferson and more
Q1: Do you follow Jason Ritter on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine? You should. 

About Elly Asghar Farhadi's pre-A Separation breakthrough, is finally out
Q2: Did you hear that Penélope Cruz is going to star in his next feature?

Boulevard (reviewed) starring the late Robin Williams as a closeted gay man. With Kathy Baker as his depressed wife and Roberto Aguire as his favorite rentboy.
Q3: What's your favorite Robin Williams performance?

The D Train (reviewed) button-pushing comedy. Jack Black, who can't let high school go, obsesses over classmate James Marsden, who made it to Hollywood. Geographically.
Q4: Have you ever obsessed over James Marsden? If so, when?

Face of An Angel  Daniel Brühl and Kate Beckinsale and a murder investigation
Q5: How many movies does Daniel Brühl make a year anyway?

Gemma Bovery  a "reimagining" of Flauberts classic with Gemma Arterton
Q6: Did you think Mia Wasikowska and Gemma are aware of each other?

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me a documentary on the music icon
Q7: Don't you think "I'm Not Going to Miss You" (Oscar nominated) is a pretty song?

Good Kill (reviewed) Director Andrew Niccol and star Ethan Hawke reunite for this military drama
Q8: Remember Gattaca?

The Harvest Horror movie starring Michael Shannon, Charlie Tahan, and Samantha Morton, the latter reportedly in scenery devouring evil mode
Q9: When's the last time you saw Samantha Morton work her magic?

I'll See You In My Dreams (Performances of 2015) A retired widow considers dating
10: Would you go out for karaoke with Blythe Danner?

Mad Max: Fury Road (Podcasted, Reviewed, Obsessed Over) Director George Miller returns to his name-making franchise and humiliates his earlier self and most working directors with his Mad Skillz at age 70 (!!!). With committed work from: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult
Q11: Are you joining us for Hit Me With Your Best Shot on Monday September 7th? PRETTY PLEASE!

The Turning
An Australian omnibus film with 17 directors doing little vignettes starring Aussie screen icons like Blanchett, Byrne, Weaving, Otto, and Roxburgh
Q12: Have you ever been to Australia?

TV Seasons
Castle (7th), Nashville (3rd), Scorpion (1st), Vampire Diaries (6th) 

Open Thread (feat. The Gurus of Gold.)

How are you feeling about the forthcoming Oscar race? Do you think we've seen several prime contenders or mostly none at all? When will you feel it's truly begun?

David Poland at Movie City News just asked the Gurus of Gold (including yours truly) to rank the forthcoming Oscar races in three different categories: widely seen already / playing the festivals / opening late in the year. You can see the charts here. If you trust "the wisdom of crowds" as it were, Carol, Inside Out, and Mad Max Fury Road are in the best positions thus far of movies that have already screened. This confuses me a bit as Carol's reviews in Cannes felt more admiring than deeply in love which can be but is not always a problem with the Academy. Plus it'll have to survive the current turmoil at the Weinstein Company. Inside Out, while a true return to form, still has to deal with the fact that it's an animated movie from a studio that has been terrifically well rewarded already that they won't feel they owe a single thing to, in a time frame in which "wow, animated movies can be just as good as live action movies!" is no longer a revelatory angle but just a "duh!" part of the landscape, and whose future slate does not suggest that it's a return to form for good since the upcoming slate is largely sequels. And though I love Mad Max: Fury Road as much as anyone -- I'll be very surprised if it doesn't make my top ten -- I'm still having trouble imagining it as a true player. The fourth film in a long dead franchise that they never cared about before (zero nominations) in a genre they don't care about (apocalyptic sci-fi) from a director who has remained an outsider by choice (George Miller) starring actors they probably like but are inarguably not obsessed with, whose pleasures often focus on practical effects and stunts (for which Oscar has no category). I'm trying to find the Oscar hook beyond ecstatic reviews (which several other movies will also have by years end as that's how the season always goes) but if there is one it's invisible!  I'm more bullish on Youth and Brooklyn, largely because they seem more traditional in terms of Oscar appeal for reasons involving both topics and tone. 

P.S. #1 Toronto is less than two weeks away. Eep!

P.S. #2 Are you joining us for Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Mad Max: Fury Road? That's Monday night, September 7th! I'll try not to choose the shot above which filled me with wild shameless feminist glee in the movie theater... but I might. We'll see.

P.S. #3 More on Oscar's Foreign Language Film race very soon but watch out for Germany. They've just selected Labyrinth of Lies and, as you may recall from last year's TIFF write-ups, it's quite good. And Oscar friendly, too. It's a Holocaust movie that doesn't feel like 'just another Holocaust movie' because it's coming at the topic from a far less overworked angle, as its about a lawyer investigating unpunished war crimes in the 1960s.

What's the best scene from summer movie season?

Team Experience will be sharing highlights of their summer viewing in a week but until then, out of curiousity... What would you name the best single scene of the summer movie season? Here are a bakers dozen of candidates that thrilled yours truly...

• Chez Andie. Magic Mike XXL 
• The Opera House. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (and where the hell has this Rebecca Ferguson woman been all our lives?)
• The Dream. Inside Out
• A Dangerous Dance. Tom at the Farm 
• Furiosa vs. Max. Mad Max: Fury Road - That chained throwdown with Immortan Joe's harem as audience
• Saving the Barn. Far From the Madding Crowd. Schoenaerts to the rescue!
• Karaoke Night. I'll See You In My Dreams 
• Birth of The Vision. Avengers: Age of Ultron. Damn but it's good to see Paul Bettany floating, mysterious, forehead bejewelled, and airbrushed red 
• Laced Drink. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Elizabeth Debicki is everything, in OR out of focus
• Nested Flashback. Ant-Man. Starring Michael Peña 
• Commercial on Loop. The D Train Jack Black's James Marsden obsession begins
• Stepmom Stakes Claim. Ricki and the Flash. It's always special and too rare to see an actress challenge Meryl Streep to a duel in a face off scene. Go Audra!
• Visiting an Old Friend. Grandma. It's been a good summer for Sam Elliott. See also: I'll See You In My Dreams

I wanted to list something from A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence but since the whole thing is brilliant short vignettes, it would take up half the list.

Please do share your favorites!