Once Upon a Time in the Link

Slate has an amusing piece arguing against the Consider Uggie campaign for that wondrous terrier in The Artist. 
Academy Awards 265 have qualified for Best Picture. Here is the complete Official list. I can't hear anything from all the LOL'ing since it's alphabetical and starts with... wait for it... ABDUCTION. Teehee

Oscarmetrics Mark Harris makes a case for Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life, which we agree is one of the year's best performances. Oscar is often about "it's time" and given that both of Pitt's performance were A grade this year, isn't it? And I swear I was linking up to this one before I even realized I was name-checked. 

tomatoes - reviews worth reading...
Devine Wrath a lovely review of romantic drama Weekend which is now available on Netflix Instant Watch. What are you waiting for?
Capital New York Sheila O'Malley, one of my favorite critics, is wowed by Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 

O, Hai...

Can I change all my BFCA and Indie Wire poll votes to this one?

top ten o' the day
Ali Arikan, a friend who is always worth a read, throws his top ten at the Chicago Sun Times from far flung Turkey. The Turkish film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which sits stubbornly beside my TV waiting to be watched (Oh the guilt-a-thon that is December!), tops his list. But for me I was most curious to read what he thought of two films I had remarkable trouble connecting to: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and We Need To Talk About Kevin (both of which I recently said a very few words on). I definitely appreciate what he has to say about Kevin though I don't like the film any better:

would reading the book help Nathaniel understand the love?A harrowing tragedy is at the centre of Lynne Ramsay's film, one we never quite see, although its repercussions we most certainly feel. The particulars of the event are at first ambiguous, and, paradoxically, it tends to become more so, thematically at least, once we find out the nature of it. Is it a mass killing at a high school? Or is there something deeper? Is the tragedy Kevin, a precocious psycho of a boy whose mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), never really wanted? Is it, in fact, Eva's selfishness? Or is it, in fact, the apotheosis of motherhood that is the real tragedy? The anachronistic and misogynistic view that the female of the species was launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same?

The film doesn't provide the answers, instead offering a glimpse into Eva's psyche, both before and after the events that sent Kevin to prison. Eva's emotional self-immolation doesn't betray just an "oy vey iz mir" pity-party of one, but also a sort of solipsism: a misappropriation and transmogrification, perhaps, of Henley's "Invictus," with Eva not just as the master of her fate, but also the executioner of her soul.

Finally...
IndieWire has year end critics consensus polling. I participated this year though as usual I'm still screening before I publish my own lists (I have about three more things I'm trying to see and two that need rewatching). The results are interesting but ...odd. Especially the supporting categories. Here's the 25 most well regarded films... the big surprises for me being A Dangerous Method (I guess those who love it, really love it) and Midnight in Paris which I expected critics to have turned against by now in the grand tradition of "if it's too popular, it's no longer cool to like it." Critics have a much higher tolerance for slow contemplative cinema as you can see. It'd be interesting to do a study of the average running time of this batch of films... or perhaps more revealing would be a study of the ratio of cuts per minute of film. After all it's hardly unusual these days for the top grossing mainstream blockbusters to have bloated running times as well. Only one of the top ten grossers of the year is shorter than an hour and 45 (that'd be The Hangover Part II) but do all of them really have 2+ hours worth of story to tell? I'd guess not. 

Are you with consensus or far from it this year???
I tend to vary greatly by year though this year I'm definitely toward the middle of consensus rather than full in or way afield. I've found 2011 to be ridiculously enjoyable on the big screen. 

It's Michelle/Marilyn for Dallas, Florida, Vegas and Chicago

The critical map continues to unfold with only three films scoring repeatedly: The Artist, The Descendants and The Tree of Life. All of them recently picking up another "best of year" prize. I had expected Hugo to feature more prominently after its high profile NBR win but that hasn't come to pass. But isn't it awfully nice to see a year with three major critical players even if you don't much like one of them (for me that's The Descendants). In short: Death to sweeps!

Michelle Williams is dominating the critics awards

While she's not quite a sweeper Michelle Williams is going to be on a lot of airplanes if she intends to attend all of these critics ceremonies that plan to honor her work in My Week With Marilyn! After the jump prizes from... Chicago and St. Louis who both just announced, Dallas Ft Worth, Florida, and Las Vegas (which I missed last week oopsie).

Click to read more ...

Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

In the beginning there was only a book, but let's start with the ending. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011) wraps up with what can only be interpreted as a prologue to a sequel. The movie's elaborate cold case puzzle plot has long since been pieced together when our socially challenged goth heroine Lisbeth Salander sets a new revenge plot in motion. Since we're already past the two hour mark, we race through this whole new story with the speed usually reserved for Lisbeth's midnight motorcycle rides. New beginnings, middles, and endings race by us like blurry highway markers. What just happened? How satisfied the movie leaves you will surely depend on whether or not you'd like to stay in your seat waiting for the next hellish chapter to unfold. 

Millions of people have eagerly flipped pages for all of the hellish chapters of the worldwide best selling "Millennium" trilogy. The Swedish literary phenomenon has already spawned three homegrown films starring Noomi Rapace (now co-opted by Hollywood for the new Sherlock Holmes movie). It's time to crack the book open again with the American version by David Fincher (The Social Network). We're jumping around in time because the experience of the movie, and this franchise in general, is also one of chapters, false starts, and piecemeal reveals.

Read the rest at Towleroad...

P.S. FWIW I'd rank David Fincher 's work like so. (I'm fully aware that I like Alien³ far more than most human beings and his biggest hits far (That'd be Benjamin and I'm presuming Dragon Tattoo) far less. And yeah, I threw in the Madonna & George Michael vids cuz they're masterpieces of the form. 

• THE GREATS: The Social Network (2010), "Express Yourself" (1989), Se7en (1995), "Vogue" (1990), "Freedom" (1990),  Zodiac (2007), "Oh Father" (1990)
• THE GOODIES:  Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002),  Alien³ (1992) "Bad Girl" (1992) and all the other music videos. He was such a master at those... 
• THE ONES I'M COOL ON THOUGH THEY HAVE THEIR INDIVIDUAL MOMENTS BECAUSE HE'S SUCH A SUPERB VISUAL STYLIST: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and The Game (1997)

The Girl With the Embargoed Reviews

Mikael Blomkvist: What are you doing?
Lisbeth Salander: Reading the reviews.
Mikael: But they're embargoed!
Lisbeth: ... 

 

Perhaps you've heard about the kerfuffle with the breaking of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo embargo? Usually these behind-the-scenes details are kept private but what happened was simply that David Denby ran his review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo early since he works for a weekly magazine rather than a daily blog and according to this thorough roundup at The Hollywood Reporter he felt he had to cover some of the important Christmas movies early (space and time limitations) else wait til January for some of them. Sony got very very angry even though the review was positive and basically a love letter to Rooney Mara who I can confirm --- no wait, I can't... I'm under embargo! In the end this amounts to nothing so much as free publicity for Dragon Tattoo and free publicity for David Denby and The New Yorker so everyone wins... though you'll surely read differently elsewhere since people like to get on soapboxes about such things.

Scott Rudin claims that Denby will be banned from his future movies but embargos are broken every year and nothing happens to anyone who breaks them. The studios are so inconsistent about how they handle them from movie to movie -- and even often from journalist to journalist on the same movie -- that it's not always easy to take them seriously. I always obey them but this is only because I'm polite and from the Midwest. But I wish I didn't ;) Playing by the rules generally doesn't help you and you may have heard that 'there is no such thing as bad publicity'? You've heard it because it's true.

The Amazing Linker-Man

Vanity Fairy Paul Mazursky, who made one of my favorite pictures (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) recalls its critical reception and then starts his own film reviewing for VF:  J. Edgar and Melancholia.
Wall Street Journal  Baseball legend Yogi Berra sees Moneyball and reminisces about his own history with the movies. Fun piece.
Coming Soon Emma Stone's opening monologue on SNL last night. Andy Samberg's Spider-Man arrives to interrupt her with a new script. Love this bit.

Emma: Ok, Andy, aren't you just redoing the same monologue that Kirsten Dunst did like 10 years ago?
Andy: Uhhh, yeah. Aren't you just redoing the exact same Spider-Man movie from 10 years ago?

Hee.

Awards Daily on the unshakeable charms of The Artist.
Thelma Adams falls for Kirsten Dunst's beautiful bitterness in Melancholia.
Playlist multihyphante showbiz woman Rie Rasmussen is gaga for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained which will "revolutionize Hollywood."
In Contention looks back at early Charlize Theron, pre Oscar Charlize in fact.
Funny or Die Ryan Gosling, the strong and very silent type. 
Serious Film on the makeup in J. Edgar
MNPP while looking at the new EW cover of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo this is what your eyes did.
Towleroad I had a brief chat with Dustin Lance Black about his screenwriting work on Milk and J. Edgar. 

stagey
NYT Hugh Jackman on Broadway review
La Daily Musto Hugh Jackman on Broadway review

Finally...
Let's end with this tribute to the title design of Saul Bass from Art of the Title...

The Title Design of Saul Bass from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

There are few things we enjoy more than a good title sequence. Which have been your favorite this year? FYC me for those Film Bitch Awards which begin sooner than you think.