This has been hanging about for a while, but I noticed it for the first time in the new issue of Sight & Sound that just landed on my doorstep. Clean, elegant, robust … I like it. The film, in case you missed my list, is my #3 of 2009. Put it at the top of your must-see list when it lands in a few weeks’ time.
[Source: Empire Online]
As I like to do when Kris boldly throws out a set of winner predictions, I thought I’d follow up with an indication of which way our readers are leaning — as well as an update of my own previous guesses.
The conclusion: well, what a difference seven weeks makes. Of course, it’s inevitable that things would go topsy-turvy in this of all months, when multiple question marks have been answered — some becoming unexpectedly insistent exclamation marks in the process.
Still, I’m surprised by how dramatically my own picks have shifted, largely due to my overestimation of “Precious”‘s pop-culture sway, and my misplaced hunch that “Avatar” would disappoint. (Well, it disappointed me, but that’s hardly the deal-breaker I’d like it to be.) Today, I’m not even predicting a nomination for the man I (rather rashly) backed to win Best Director last month … such is the fickle nature of the game.
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.
Wrapping up my perspective on the year today, a personal list of superlatives, Oscar categories and other silly nonsense.
Swing back around on Monday for the ultimate wrap-up, my list of the best films of the decade.
Best Picture
“A Serious Man” (Focus Features)
Best Director
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”
Best Actor
Sharlto Copley, “District 9”
Best Actress
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
(UPDATE: Due to an error on the EFA’s own website, we initially reported that the technical Prix d’Excellence had been awarded to “Vincere.” This is incorrect: the sound design team behind “A Prophet” took the prize.)
Foreign-language Oscar favorites “The White Ribbon” and “A Prophet” have been locked in something of an awards duel since May, when they took the top two prizes at Cannes.
However, while the latter film has been hogging the spotlight of late — pipping “Ribbon” to the post at the London Film Festival, the NBR Awards and even the Spirit noms — Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner clawed back some momentum at tonight’s European Film Awards, taking the top three prizes for Best Film, Director and Screenwriter.
“A Prophet,” which entered the race as the most-nominated contender, had to be content with a well-deserved Best Actor award for sensational newcomer Tahar Rahim, as well as the technical Prix d’Excellence for its sound team.
Two weeks ago, I mentioned the impressive shortlist of nominees for the Louis Delluc Prize, a prestigious juried award handed annually to the title thought to represent the best in French cinema. Variety has just reported that Jacques Audiard’s Oscar contender “A Prophet” is this year’s winner.
The news isn’t entirely unsurprising — the Delluc sometimes sidelines obvious frontrunners in favor of more hidden gems, as was the case last year, when “The Class” lost to documentary “Modern Life.”
Not so this time — indeed, Audiard’s film has barely missed an awards opportunity since taking silver at Cannes. It also looks a good bet to take home some hardware at tomorrow’s European Film Awards … could the Oscar even be within reach?
Meanwhile, another prison-related drama, Lea Fehner’s “Silent Voice,” took the Best First Film award.
The mark of a true Oscar geek is the self-assignment of nuttily completist viewing exercises. Only a select few understand the drive to track down every Oscar-affiliated titles in existence — however obscure, expensive or awful — all so one can say with absolute authority who should have won, say, Best Actor in 1952. (Alec Guinness, since you ask.)
As small an achievement as it appears to the uninitiated, I remember the sense of triumph I felt upon excavating a VHS copy of “Cavalcade,” then the last remaining Best Picture winner I hadn’t seen. (Triumph soon turned to agony as I actually watched the film, but I prefer to forget that.)
So I doff my hat to Variety critic Peter Debruge. Inspired by a montage in the 2007 Academy Awards broadcast — see, the montages aren’t completely useless after all — Debruge set himself the task of watching every Best Foreign Language Film winner in Oscar history, encompassing 61 titles ranging from the canonized to the buried.
No annual Top 10 list carries more weight with me than that compiled by Sight & Sound, the UK’s premier film magazine. One of the most thorough and prestigious collectives out there, it’s collated from the individual lists of over 60 international critics, including the likes of Kenneth Turan, Mark Kermode, Amy Taubin, Armond White and IC friend Tim Robey.
The S&S list usually chimes in quite neatly with my own personal taste: last year’s edition (topped by Steve McQueen’s “Hunger”) featured six titles that ultimately landed on my own end-of-year rundown. This year’s is no different: regular readers will recognize a number of titles that I’ve been banging on about all year, including a most gratifying double-dip for the great Claire Denis. (Where was all this support for “White Material” when I needed it in Venice?)
All in all, it’s a pretty impeccable selection of films, one that gives the lie to those saying 2009 is a weak year. I’d like to see the Academy even try to put together a Top Ten as strong as this…
While I was away in Paris earlier this week, I was reminded there of the nominations for the Louis Delluc Prize. Awarded to a single title, it is arguably the most prestigious award in French cinema, having been won by such titans as Truffaut, Renoir, Chabrol, Malle, Bresson, Cocteau, Tati … well, you get the idea.
Meanwhile, some formidable auteurs feature in this year’s shortlist, including past three-time winner Alain Resnais and, of course, current Oscar player Jacques Audiard. The eight nominees are:
“Hadewijch” (Bruno Dumont)
“I’m Glad That My Mother Is Alive” (Claude and Nathan Miller)
“In the Beginning” (Xavier Giannoli)
“Irene” (Alain Cavalier)
“Making Plans for Lena” (Christophe Honoré)
“A Prophet” (Jacques Audiard)
“Welcome” (Philippe Lioret)
“Wild Grass” (Alain Resnais)
Between now and December 31, we’re probably going to read more “best ____ of the 2000s” lists than we know what to do with. But we like lists, don’t we? And this only happens once every 10 years. Let’s not get blasé already.
So with the floodgates already open on “films of the decade” talk, there’s plenty more to fuel the discussion. Paste Magazine has a nicely balanced Top 50 that puts “City of God” in pole position, and wins extra cinephile points for putting Claire Denis alongside Peter Jackson in the top 10.
Meanwhile, The Times supplements their own collective with a (impossibly formatted) selection of Top Tens from assorted British industry figures, including Julian Fellowes and Richard Eyre. “An Education” scribe Nick Hornby wins top marks from me for a list that includes “Lantana,” “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” and “I’m Not There.”
But for my money, no list I’ve seen so far is as rich and well thought-out as Telegraph critic Tim Robey’s personal Top 100 — a corrective of sorts to the “films that defined the decade” list he compiled with his Telegraph colleagues, which took some flak on the web, these pages included.
Is “A Prophet” gradually stealing awards-season momentum from “The White Ribbon?” (It’s the superior film, if you ask me.) Too soon to say, of course, but it certainly came out on top in this morning’s European Film Award nominations.
Jacques Audiard’s searing chronicle of French prison gangs leads the field with six nominations, to four for Michael Haneke’s German Palme d’Or winner. The two films, seen by many pundits as the chief contenders for the foreign-language Oscar, also appear to be the frontrunners here, continuing a rivalry that started way back in May at Cannes.
Also beating “Ribbon”‘s total, with five nods (six, if you include the People’s Choice Award), is “Slumdog Millionaire,” which didn’t make last year’s cut-off date. The film’s popularity clearly still lingers (to the point that it even eked out a Best Actor nod for Dev Patel, ahead of, say, Michael Fassbender), though I sense its moment has passed.
(More discussion, and a full list of nominees, after the cut.)
I love it. Kris loves it. Anne Thompson loves it. And hey, Anjelica Huston loves it too.
If you’re a little curious as to what the fuss is about, here is a subtitle-free glimpse of Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” handily the finest foreign-language Oscar contender I’ve seen so far. (Not that I’ve seen many. But this’ll take some beating.)
We’ve taken concentrated looks at the lead actress and supporting actress categories in recent weeks. Now let’s turn our attention over to the fellas.
Behind the Best Picture race, of course, the lead actor competition is perhaps the most hotly anticipated award of a given Oscar telecast. Movie stars are born, Hollywood staples are rewarded and careers leap to the next level. It makes for an intriguing annual state of the union as it pertains the the film industry’s talent roster.
This year, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars finds himself right at the front of the conversation. George Clooney is likely to end up with his third acting Oscar nomination, for Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air,” and he’ll owe much of that to Reitman’s powerful work on the page.
Clooney doesn’t give his best performance to date in the film. But the material is so cleverly built around his persona that one can’t blame the actor for saddling up to a role that fits like a glove. And there is something to be said for the bravery of taking one’s image on like that.
Colin Firth, meanwhile, has caused a critical stir with his leading performance in Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.” He has already won the Venice Film Festival’s acting honor and has been tapped for another at February’s Santa Barbara Film Festival. He is pitch-perfect in the film, giving a refined performance of nuance and gesture.
We have a belated edition of Oscar Talk for you today. We apologize for the lateness, but what better way to kick back on a Sunday afternoon than with yours truly and Anne Thompson of indieWIRE’s Thompson on Hollywood?
In this eighth installment, we actually covered a lot of ground. This week’s topics:
• With “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” hitting theaters this weekend, we lead off talking brief about the film (which Anne hasn’t seen).
• With music on the mind, this leads to another quick discussion about the Academy’s music branch, which caused poor Sad brad Smith to preemptively refrain from submitting his moving track “Help Yourself” from “Up in the Air” for consideration this year.
• Rumors of Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Oscarcast after doing bang-up jobs at the Tonys and Emmys are circulating, and in the wake of Ricky Gervais being tapped to emcee the Golden Globes this year, we spin our wheels on that topic one more time.
• “Precious” is opening next week, so with that (and Anne’s recent piece concerning Mo’Nique’s behind-the-scenes drama issues) in mind, we talk about whether the film, or the actress herself, has to win a popularity contest this season to gain the Academy’s attention and respect.
I always knew Anjelica Huston and I were of a like mind. As I reflect on the 60-odd films I’ve seen the London Film Festival, which draws to a close tomorrow, Jacques Audiard’s French Oscar contender “A Prophet” stands comfortably taller than anything else I’ve seen … and given the standard of this year’s LFF lineup, that’s no back-handed compliment.
Ms. Huston clearly agrees: at a ceremony tonight, together with the other five members of her jury (a rum bunch including Charlotte Rampling, Matthieu Kassovitz and Jarvis Cocker), she handed “A Prophet” the festival’s inaugural Best Film award (alternatively named the Star of London). It triumphed over eight other shortlisted titles, including its Cannes conqueror “The White Ribbon.” Huston said of Audiard’s film:
A masterpiece: “Un Prophete” has the ambition, purity of vision and clarity of purpose to make it an instant classic. With seamless and imaginative story-telling, superb performances and universal themes, Jacques Audiard has made a perfect film.”
“The Road,” interestingly enough, was given a runner-up “special mention” by the jury, despite its continued mixed reception. John Hillcoat’s film was singled out for its “breathtaking vision, extraordinary performances and profound political statement.”