I keeping getting asked via comments, email and Twitter, so I’ll just save some breath and make a mention here. Note the last two installments (2007 and 2008) landed in mid-January at the earliest. Expect the same this year, as I haven’t even begun to assemble all the shots and get the lensers on the horn for commentary. Patience.
Category: Daily
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12/28 Oscarweb Round-up
• Pete Hammond can’t let go of this notion that “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” is a Best Picture contender. A bunch of number 10 slots aren’t going to cut it, Pete. [Notes on a Season]• Adam B. Vary notes the curious absence of Gene Hackman from the silver screen since the 2004 bomb “Welcome to Mooseport.” [Pop Watch]
• Criminally underrated composer Clint Mansell spills a little on his plans for Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” [Little White Lies]
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Holiday film thoughts
It struck me that I should probably offer up some space for you all to discuss the latest releases since it’s obviously been a slow-moving week, so if you want to speak up on “It’s Complicated,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Up in the Air,” “The Princess and the Frog,” “Nine” or, God bless you, “The Squeakquel,” have at it here. I’m on a jet plane back to the West coast tomorrow evening and things will be back to normal Monday.
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“Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last.”
Except not, because I’ve had a pretty darn lovely Christmas Day here in the Irish countryside: snow on the window ledge, more food and champagne than is medically advisable, and nothing ahead of me but the Boxing Day cricket test on TV and hours of free time to ponder my best-of-decade list.
Hope your day has given you equal cause for contentment. For now, I give you the song without which no Christmas is really complete. Just in case you missed it.
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Jai Ho Ho Ho
A year late with that quip, and I owe it to reader/commenter Adam Smith in any case, but the point being, if yours is a tradition of celebrating today’s holiday, I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable time. It’s beautiful in New York, snow on the ground in the park, the midtown vibe is all storybook and shit. I’m having fun. Things should be back to normal and up to pace next week, but for now, a moment with my favorite Christmas movie:
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Precursor updates
Just a heads up, we’ve been keeping track of all the precursor announcements at our Precursor Circuit page. The latest additions are the London, Phoenix, Oklahoma, Florida and Houston. I hope everyone’s having a fun and relaxing holiday week so far.
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Things of beauty: Guy’s best of 2009
The year of the woman. The year of animation. The year of science-fiction. Depending on who you read (and believe), the final year of the decade has been an awful lot of things.If you’re with Kris, it’s also the best cinematic year of the last ten. If you’re with an awful lot of others, it’s quite the opposite. I’ll stop short of rewriting the first page of “A Tale of Two Cities,” but suffice to say it’s been different things to different people.
What kind of year has it been for me? I think I’ll need another year to figure that out in detail. But as I compiled the list you’re about to read, I happily concluded that it’s been, at the very least, a good one: the 25 titles gathered here were jotted down with minimal brain-racking, with still more fighting from the sidelines.
None of them are grudging inclusions, either: I sincerely liked most of these titles too much to allow room for popular or critical phenomena that are worthy of respect, but nonetheless didn’t connect with me personally. There was a sufficient range of quality work in 2009 (following a lean 2008) that any film lover could afford to construct his own playlist of future treasures without resorting to consensus.
Before we begin, a note on the construction of the list. In addition to my Top 10, there are 15 honorable mentions here, five of them singled out for extra consideration. Some of you will quibble that I opt to include international or festival releases that have yet to surface in the U.S.
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‘Hurt Locker’ sweeps Chicago critics’ awards
Sorry we’re a bit late getting round to this — as you know, Kris and I are in holiday mode this week. Anyway, while the Chicago Film Critics’ Association threw some curveballs in their nominations list, their winners stuck mostly to the status quo.
When the “status quo,” however, is one of my favorite films of the year, you won’t hear me complaining. The pull of “The Hurt Locker” proved so powerful in the Windy City that it won every category in which it was shortlisted, with writer Mark Boal taking his first prize of the season. Carey Mulligan, meanwhile, was a double winner, beating Gabourey Sidibe in both the actress and newcomer races.
Full list of winners after the cut; CFCA member Roger Ebert’s report is here.
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John Woo to receive career award at Venice 2010
Seems a bit early to be thinking about such matters, given that the 2010 Venice Film Festival is not until September 1, but here’s an early Christmas present for veteran Chinese action master John Woo.He will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival, one year after John Lasseter and the Pixar crew received the same honor. (For an artsy festival, this award is taking an interestingly populist bent of late.) Hopefully, I’ll be on the Lido again to observe first-hand.
The news caps a reasonably prominent year for Woo, whose latest, “Red Cliff,” has a number of admirers. I personally think he has yet to top “Face/Off,” but maybe that’s my inner 14 year-old talking. Press release after the cut.
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The best films of a decade
This column has been the elephant in my living room for months.Putting together a list of the year’s best films is easy. It’s fresh. It’s in your mind. It’s, in many ways, the expected culmination.
Putting together a list of the decade’s best films is a different chore altogether. Yearly rankings fly out the window as a proper gauge, because tastes shift and impacts either dwindle or deepen. Revisiting films is called for, but fitting in the works you missed along the way is also imperative. It can be maddening.
And the truth is, you can’t see everything. All you can do is try to be as honest about how you feel as you can. And even then, no list can be definitive on a personal level, let alone authoritative.
And so the whittling begins, and in many ways, the process is the reward. The ultimate collective is a mere reminder of the journey through 10 years of film product. But some things stuck out along the way.
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Fair warning
Things could be a bit quieter around here throughout the week. I’m off to New York for a week and will update where the mood strikes me, I imagine. But after tomorrow’s “best of the decade” column, well…just leave a light on for me.
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R.I.P. Brittany Murphy
I’ve been waiting most of the morning someone other than TMZ to post a report. Here’ the LA Times. Anyway, what do you say about someone who dies at 32? All sadness. And the timing, just before the holidays, a week after SNL spoofed her out of nowhere. What do you say?
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Roger Ebert’s top 10 list(s)
Roger Ebert has been alive like never before in his work as of late. So I’ve been greatly anticipating his views on the year’s best.Unfortunately, he’s divided his list into mainstream and independent films, so it’s a top 20, and neither in any order.
Maybe keeping things simple like that and not so authoritative with painstaking rankings is the way to go. I’ve been considering it for a long time.
Anyway, the most interesting inclusions on his mainstream list are “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” “Crazy Heart” and “Knowing.” On the indie side, “Departures,” “Goodbye Solo” and “Trucker.”
Check out the rest at the Chicago Sun-Times.
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WEEKLY WRAP: Precursor avalanche, best of 2009
• Kris wrapped up 2009 with his take on the year’s best films, also offering his own preferred nominees and winners in a range of categories. (I’ll chime in next week.)• “Up in the Air” led this year’s pack of Golden Globe nominees.
• It also joined “Precious” and “Inglourious Basterds” at the head of the pack in the SAG nominations — while missing out in their top race.
• “The Hurt Locker” emerged as this year’s critics’ favorite, earning top honors from a host of groups, including the two biggest: the NYFCC and the LAFCA.
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The Great Performances: 2005
2005 was the year of Heath Ledger’s beautiful, moving performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” which I saw for the first time in Toronto. It instantly became the talk of the festival, and the film became the one to beat for the Academy Award.Ledger was astonishing as the taciturn cowboy who is more surprised than anybody when his soulmate turns out to be another cowboy, portrayed superbly by Jake Gyllenhall. If there is a more deeply felt moment in film history than Ledger gently adjusting Gyllenhall’s shirt at the end of the film, his eyes filled with tears, I don’t know what it is. That’s loss, that is absolute heartbreak, that is one of the greatest acting performances of the decade.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman would win the Oscar for his transformation into “Capote” and he’s very good, but just not in the same league as Ledger. I wondered from time to time if “Infamous” had been released earlier if Toby Jones might have won the Oscar instead of Hoffman. Each becomes Capote in a very different manner, and side by side it is difficult to choose the stronger portrayal. Certainly I prefer Hoffman’s as it is darker, and for me more realistic, but there can be no denying Jones.