Jack-O-Linkin'

<-- Ooh look The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo poster. There are so many posters for every movie nowadays that I think the word "official" has lost all meaning. But I like it. The tag line sounds artier than most

"what is hidden in snow comes forth in the thaw"

Slant has a strong piece on the 25 best horror films of the Aughts. Some truly surprising but gratifying inclusions.
Film Buff On Demand has a fun post about Halloween treats you can make for your party like brain cupcakes and such. 
The Movie 411 has a nomination round in which you can submit your favorite blog articles or movies blogs in various categories. 
IndieWire considers the many way's this year's Oscar race might mirror 1998's: Brothers Weinsteins comedy vs. Steven Spielberg war epic with a little Terrence Malick on the side. And that's not all.
The Movie 411 has a nomination round in which you can submit your favorite blog articles or movies blogs in various categories. 
Michael Musto's choice of the two best lines in The Descendants 

I hadn't seen this so maybe you haven't either but delicious devil Colin Farrel presented Robert Downey Jr with the "Hero" award at the recent Scream Awards. Like so...

That is one gawdy-ass awards show!

Grantland Mark Harris on the writers branch of the Academy. Which causes will they take up this year?
Movie|Line speaks with Sean Durkin, the writer/director of Martha Marca May Marlene
IndieWire speaking of... how about a double feature with a previously disturbing cult movie The Rapture. Let's call it Martha Marcy Mimi Michael
Boy Culture shares an awesome Elizabeth Taylor photo and Richard Burton poem. I can never get enough of Liz & Dick.
Towleroad Gareth Thomas, who came out of the closet two years ago, is retiring from rugby. I wonder if his biopic is still on... it's SO weird that Mickey Rourke is supposed to play him because they look nothing alike and Jason Statham would be so so perfect. 

 

Pajiba "the superhot women of old timey westerns"
HitFix Eddie Murphy speaks about his Oscar hosting gig. 

Oscar Horrors: Jonathan Demme, Silence'd

Editor's Note: in this new series we're exploring Oscar nominated or Oscar winning contributions to the horror genre to get you in the right mood for Halloween. For this edition I've invited first time contributor Mayukh Sen, to offer up his provocative thoughts on an Oscar winner -Nathaniel.

Here lies... Jonathan Demme's early career. There was a time when he was the most promising young American director of his time.  But we lost all his potential the minute he won his Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Demme was a humanist in an era that desperately needed one.  He loved people, and he possessed grace, sensitivity, and a lack of condescension toward his working-class characters.  Kind of like McCarey or Renoir, he had a way of illuminating human flaws and virtues without passing judgment and was capable of expressing patience -- talents many directors lack.  Demme's universe seemed unhinged by the good-evil binary that pervades how many artists render America's lower- middle class. He refused to make human idiosyncrasies seem foolish or naive.

Around the time of Lambs, though, Demme lost one of his salient characteristics – lightness of touch.  Demme seems conscious of the fact that he is directing a “thriller”, and thus that he must downplay his sometimes offbeat, pop art-influenced aesthetic impulses for us to digest the narrative’s direness.  And, though he does still demonstrate considerable compassion for his characters, Demme seems more interested in asserting Clarice Starling's singular heroism than probing the moral ambiguities of the other characters.

This may seem like a petty complaint, but watch some of his earlier works – Caged Heat, Last Embrace – and you’ll understand what exactly we're missing from the old Demme.  Pauline Kael, one of Demme's earliest champions, said it best when she criticized Lambs for treating pulp as art.  She was right -- there’s nothing urgent or passionate about it.

This has happened with many directors. Post-Last Tango, Bertolucci never achieved the sensuality that characterized Before the Revolution or The Conformist.  Success brought upon more ambition, and the intimacy of his earlier work was lost.  

A part of me will always remember Lambs as the point at which Demme jumped the shark. Though Lambs is effective and, at times, fascinating, it doesn't have the charge of early Demme.  At best, his subsequent films function on the level of interesting failures.  I’m afraid that Demme's school of satiric humanism is unlike anything we'll ever see from him again, and I attribute this to his acceptance at the hands of the Hollywood elite.

16 More Oscar Horrors
From The Exorcist through the Fly and on to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane...

Naked Gold Man: War Horse Un'Lock'ed & Oscar Vote Theories

Weekly Column! Just in time for weekly chart updates. You heard me!

Let's start with an oft-forgotten fact: there are no "locks" until films are open and seen by the Academy. Even then, positive reactions don't always translate into votes. War Horse would be the right example. It feels like a winner by way of pedigree (Spielberg and Team), topic (World War), intangibles (the Broadway play on the same topic is a hit!) and early peeks (the trailer), but until voters are actually watching any movie from start to finish, you can't know.

Until you have seen a movie there is no way to consider how it tugs at your own heart (or doesn't), how it seizes your imagination (or doesn't) and how your instant reaction sizes up with general consensus. Instant reactions do not happen in lockstep with voting (at least not usually) and consensus --  which is say the wisdom of masses, media favoritism, and opinions from one's own social circle  -- absolutely affects individual response though people regularly feign otherwise.

Seeing the pictures is key and without the keys, aren't locks mere abstractions?

J. Edgar is another prime example. It's got the pedigree team, the baity topic and genre, but the second people are watching it things will change, for better or worse. I can't say that I'm hopeful after seeing the dull musty trailer, which plays more like the zombie corpse of an Oscar contender rather than a lively shiny hopeful. But then, I didn't get the Clint Eastwood Appreciation Gene so I readily admit that I am no representative sample.

To win nominations a film (or performance) must not only win hearts, minds and imaginations but it must stack up favorably against its competition. In other words "locks" for films or actors no one has seen are an absurd notion. Take War Horse again... will its message resonate with voters as much as The Help's? Will the young male lead (no, not the horse) inspire them or make them feel as protective as his counterpart in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close might? Will anything within War Horse, stimulate like the wit and adult soul of Moneyball? Does the equine war drama have any lighter moments and are they as effervescent or charming as the best scenes from The Artist or Midnight in Paris? 

If nominations were held RIGHT NOW, right this second, and all films that have been seen by a lot of people -- i.e. multiple festivals (whether they're technically open yet or not) were eligible these would be your only "Locks"

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Dangerous Expectations

For what it's worth...

I saw A Dangerous Method last night and enjoyed it. With the New York Film Festival press events in swing (the festival proper starts on the 30th) and other screenings happening to the side we've arrived at our favorite time of year... Prestige Picture let out of the gate! As we speak, Michael and Kurt are watching Lars von Trier's Melancholia (which I've already seen and found fascinating and difficult to let settle) so you'll be hearing about these two movies shortly and later on when they open, too. Fall season is best because even when the movies aren't perfect they offer plenty to talk (and argue) about.

This adaptation of The Talking Cure (a phrase used in the movie unlike its new title) won't hit until November so my proper review will wait but I wanted to note straightaway that it wasn't quite what I was expecting -- almost stately, subtle and one might even say uptight to the point of refusing catharsis. Keira Knightley handles her difficult role well and without vanity, jutting her jaw out grotesquely and contorting her body to the point that it's even more alien and angular than one might have ever found it before. It's as if she's never read any of the critiques of her beauty. (I would like to note that I don't take kindly to the common hateful screeds about the actual looks of actors that are so popular on the web but this is rather like Sarah Jessica Parker -- who I personally love to look at -- agreeing to co-star in a picture entirely about horses.)

Freud (Viggo) and Jung (Fassy)Loved Viggo as Freud but was quite surprised to have difficulty with Michael Fassbender for the first time. I'm guessing that repression is, like depression, difficult to act in a mesmerizing way. For what it's worth my favorite male portrait of stifling repression is probably Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day who I would have handed the Oscar to in 1993. I am not overly fond of Hopkins so maybe I just have issues with male repression onscreen? A point of comparison: I was similarly unwowed by Daniel Day-Lewis when he made The Age of Innocence which is the picture my mind kept drifting towards.

As to Oscar speculation: I suspect that if there is Oscar play then The Age of Innocence is a far better comparison than Remains of the Day. But I suppose it all depends on whether AMPAS is in a repressed well appointed 90s period piece mood (they've kind of moved away from that lately, right?) and how the competition holds up when all the game pieces are on the board. 

Top 100 "Characters" From 50 Years of Best Actressing

This past summer we polled you once or twice a month about the Best Actress characters that you think of the most often from the past 50 years of the cinema taking us all the way from 1961 through to this past spring's Oscars for the films of 2010! With the new fall season of The Film Experience kicking off and the Oscar films arriving, I thought we'd take one last look back at that polling.

It was quite fun for little OCD actressexual me to peruse and "sort" and all of that in excel. If you're OCD like me and want to know how I compiled the chart, which is listed in alphabetical order below and pictured in slide show format in chronological order, there's more information after the list. I'd love to say that we'd do 100 articles to celebrate (one for each of your fav' fictionalized ladies) but that would be an insane thing to promise. But we'll use the chart for inspirational somethings! Give these characters a big round of applause for all their years of entertaining service.

By all means if you haven't seen any of the 98 films represented, make it a viewing priority. 

Your 100 Most Memorable Best Actress "Characters"
50 Years | 100 Greats (1961-2010)  

List presented visually (chronologically) and in text form (alphabetically) after the jump. Plus: Statistics!

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