NYFCC's 2010 Wins: "The Social Kids That Are All Right Network"

The New York Film Critics Circle forms, together with LAFCA (Los Angeles Film Critics Association) and the NSFC* (National Society of Film Critics), the holy trinity** of critics awards. LA & NY combined can be a potent influential mix... not that they often agree. But this year they did, further underlining the dominance of The Social Network this awards season. The other big boost went to The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko's warmly funny family-at-crossroads film, which picked up three major wins (Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay)

Picture The Social Network
Director David Fincher for The Social Network
Actress Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
Actor Colin Firth for The King's Speech

We already knew that Best Actress was shaping up to be a Bening vs. Portman showdown. But it was not confirmed in a neatly bi-coastal way since Portman did not take LAFCA yesterday. She wasn't even runner-up. Nevertheless, it's still firmly on track to turn out that way, a two-person battle, since they're the likely Globe winners in Comedy and Drama, respectively.


Supporting Actress Melissa Leo for The Fighter
Supporting Actor Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right
Screenplay Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg for The Kids Are All Right
Cinematography Matthew Libatique for Black Swan
Animated Film Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist
Documentary Inside Job
Foreign Film Carlos
First Feature David Michôd's Animal Kingdom
Special Prize is there one this year? I haven't seen one specified online and their site has not been updated.

Having been a big fan of Animal Kingdom all year, I am pleased for David Michôd's win, since the praise has usually reduced the film to the Jacki Weaver show. Weaver aside, the entire cast is strong and so is the film so good on NYFCC for noticing.

Animal Kingdom's cast: Frecheville, Stapleton, Ford, Weaver,
Joel Edgerton and Ben Mendelsohn

In other film critics org news today, The Southeastern Film Critics Association named The Social Network the years best and also hilariously named True Grit's Hailee Steinfeld the best "supporting" actress of the year. What she's supporting, other than her entire Coen Bros picture, we don't know. They used to call that "carrying" a film and that's only done by lead actors. What the Christ? She's even more of a lead than Frances McDormand was in Fargo! See also: BFCA Nominations for this year's most egregious Category Fraud party. Every year has one.

*in recent years it seems that the NSFC has been fading -- so perhaps the only powerful critics orgs are now LA & NY... at least in terms of media interest -- given NSFC's late voting and the ever expanding roster of film awards.

NYFCO (Prizes and Top Ten List)

Need one more critics group for the day? No? Well then don't open up this window.

The New York Film Critics Online, which is a fairly new organization as critics awards go, embraced most of the Oscar frontrunners with the exception of The King's Speech. Their awards went like so... I may have missed a few but I shall update again if I have.


Picture: The Social Network

• Their top ten list is (alpha order) 127 Hours, Another Year, Black Swan, Blue Valentine, The Ghost Writer, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and The Social Network. 
 

A couple mild surprises in that top ten but the awards themselves are very Oscar-predictiony.

Director: David Fincher, The Social Network
Actor: James Franco in 127 Hours
Actress: Natalie Portman in Black Swan
Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Ensemble Cast: The Kids Are All Right
Debut Performance: Noomi Rapace for The Millenium Trilogy.
Debut Director: John Wells, The Company of Men
Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Cinematography: Matthew Libatique, Black Swan
Music or Score: Clint Mansell, Black Swan
Documentary: Exit Through the Gift Shop
Foreign Film: I Am Love
Animated Film: Toy Story 3

It's Top Ten Time! (Not Here, But Elsewhere.)

Setting aside for a moment the personal view that people rush too quickly into naming their favorites every year (usually well before the annum is over) I do love reading a good top ten list. When those  lists are from magazines, they have a long lead excuse so let's enjoy them.

The L Magazine, a local NYC offering ("the L"is a subway), has released their Best Films of 2010 and as usual there's a lot to argue with. For instance, Mark Asche lulled me into a state of hipster foreign-film auteurism before clobbering me by honoring Woody Allen at the end. Did not see that coming given the rest of the list and, what's more, I'd call You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger Woody's nadir if I hadn't failed at successfully erasing all memories of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending. Where is Lacuna, Inc when I need them? Nicolas Rapold, like Asche, leads with Carlos but then has to go and throw in Oki's Movie. Someone please point me to a review of this that explains its worth. I remain perplexed that some cinephiles go apeshit for a movie that is so anti-cinematic; it all but refuses visual interest. "I'm just gonna leave this camera here and not for a brilliantly composed one shot either but just because I can't be bothered to think visually. There! Deal with it." And so it goes throughout the lists with the mix of "yes, good point." and "wtf?" but what would Top Ten Season be without that? Dull, that's what.

The most eccentric list belongs to Benjamin Strong who starts with Godard and ends with... Splice? The most surprising list is the most mainstream (they don't often go hand in hand) coming from Jesse Hassenger who mixes geek-causes, Oscar hopefuls, mainstream comedies... and Greenberg. Noah Baumbach's miserable middle-age protagonist is totes the new mascot for L Magazine appearing on five of the six lists. I liked the movie quite a bit, especially Greta Gerwig's deliciously unactressy actressing if you get me, but I'm not sure I follow all the top ten / awards enthusiasm. Not sure it clears those "best" hurdles, though it's definitely a worthy effort.

I Am Love, a succulent dish.

Finally, you should all head over to Anthony Lane's top ten list at The New Yorker. He's long been one of my favorite writers, no matter what he happens to think of any particular movie. He's just so damn readable; an expert at the turn of a phrase, the offhand quip and the skillful resolution. My favorite part is this awesome "divisive/unifying" double feature since I deeply love both of 'em.

There were films that divided, in 2010, like Luca Guadagnino’s “I Am Love,” whose peach-like ripeness of sensation made some recoil, but which to others, a mite less embarrassable, showed with fine, Italianate panache how uncontrollable feelings can be held and sustained by an organizing eye. And there were films that united, like David Fincher’s “The Social Network”; who would not revel in the irony of a movie about smart-ass kids that was suitable for intelligent grownups? People felt moved to feast, in the aftermath, on its many implications—scary or succulent, depending on your taste for the new, endlessly mediated world. And how long, incidentally, has it been since you saw a film that was gripped by great animus and hostility but was not resolved by violent means? Quite the opposite, in fact; when someone raised a hand against Justin Timberlake, he backed away like a kitten.

But go read the whole thing for takes on Winter's Bone, A Prophet, Dogtooth and more.

What? You still want more? You're insatiable with list lust. Here's a few more.

•  rjrucker's "top ten (so far)" I guess I egged him on.
• Awards Daily dissects Peter Travers awards whoring list.

Box Office Blather: Unstoppable Potter and the 127 Tangled Swans

No, not that BOB.

Box Office Blather. Let's call it "BOB".

One should probably discuss it weekly (and not on Wednesday? Shut it. I'm late.) if only to be more "in the world" and less hermetically sealed in one's own bubble, he said to himself while gazing at his navel in his 360º mirror.

In all seriousness this is a problem. I sometimes stare at box office charts and think "'The Warrior's Way'?  What the hell is that?" And, bear in mind, I think and write about movies 7 days a week so these blind spots can be problematic. And yet, when you live in a big city and you have options you don't always notice what's playing in thousands of theaters when you can obsess over something like Black Swan which is playing in just over a dozen. Thus one stays sealed in one's bubble.

Box Office Blather Bakers Dozen
("Bobbed!"...why do I need names for everything? It's a sickness)

1. Tangled (2nd week) $21.6 [cumulative: $96.5] -55%
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1 (3rd week) $17 [cumulate: $244.5] -65 %
3. Burlesque (2nd week) $6.1 [cumulative: $26.9] -48%
4. Unstoppable (4th week) $5.9 [cumulative: $68.7] -47%
5. Love and Other Drugs (2nd week)  $5.6 [cumulative: $22.5] -42%
6. Megamind (5th week) $4.9 [cumulative: $136.6] -60%
7. Due Date (5th week) $4.1 [cumulative: $90.8] -42%
8. Faster (2nd week) $3.9 [cumulative: $18.2] -53%
9. The Warrior's Way DEBUT $3.0
10. The Next Three Days (3rd week)  $2.5 [cumulate: $18.3] -45%
11. Morning Glory (4th week) $1.6 [cumulative: $29] -54%
    
12. 127 Hours (5th week) $1.6 [cumulative: $6.6] -5%
13. Black Swan DEBUT $1.4

A few random or obnoxious observations about that chart [src] come after the jump




Let's start off by alienating all of you! Wheeeee. Back in 2001 and 2002 I was incensed with Hollywood for being so lame / literal when the first two Harry Potters emerged and they were like books on tape only the tape was film. Then, through sheer force of ---FULL STOP. We should save this for the "Year in Review, Cinematic Shame" section later in December.

About 127 Hours... should it or shouldn't it be doing better business? It's a matter of perspective I suppose. One of my friends shared this on Facebook and said I could share it here. It's just too amusing while also illustrating a box office obstacle to the movie.

My parents' review of 127 HOURS (they went with another couple): "We all really enjoyed the movie a lot. But we didn't see the one you wanted us to see. We got to the theater, and Rhonda didn't want to watch the arm-cutting, so we saw 'Morning Glory' instead. It was adorable."

lol.

I'm sad that Burlesque isn't a smash. Now, we'll never get the sequel Burlesque 2 that Joe Reid pitched like so...

Burlesque 2, where Cher and Xtina must deal with a rival burlesque club that moves in across the street, run by a wizened Madonna and her protégée Britney Spears.

I would pay a month's wages to see that movie.

Moving on... Black Swan's $77,000 per screen average is a feat (a record for Fox Searchlight) as is the #13 status when it's only on 18 screens. But it remains to be seen how well that ballet thriller will transfer once it widens. "Weird" movies don't tend to play all that well at the box office, no matter how brilliant they are. You could counter with Inception but how weird is that? It explains the weirdness to you to make sure you don't get confused and the dream imagery, for all its gargantuan f/x thrills, isn't surreal like actual dreams. I'm trying to think of a strange movie that did well at the box office and I'm coming up blank. Do bizarre movies -- even the thrilling ones -- ever make a splash at the box office? (Post 1970s I mean.) Think of the fervor for Mullholland Dr (2001) and remember: it only managed $7 million in the States. My friend who I was discussing this with thinks I'm underestimating the accessibility of Swan but agreed that there's still going to be a ceiling; maybe Precious sized grosses? Help me out in the comments. What do you think the ceiling is for the high/low mix of psychological ballet thriller and camp horror hallucinatory artistic metaphor? 

Argh! And there I go again with the bubble. 127 Hours and Black Swan are only 451 screens between them and that's immediately what I start talking about. Perhaps this will be a project for 2011. Go to more mainstream movies. Experiment. (Didn't Tim Brayton agree to review anything that opened at #1 at the box office. Or did I imagine that? Think of the things you'd have to review!) My point is this: My brother called last week wanting to talk about Skyline which opened on 2800 screens and Megamind which opened on nearly 4,000. I hadn't seen them. Total bummer because I don't talk to my brother enough and he called about movies, sniffle, my favorite topic.

Tangled has nearly equalled the entire The Princess and the Frog gross
in its first two weeks.

So outside the bubble... Tangled. Do you think Disney will attribute its success to that misleading obnoxious ad campaign positioning it as a Shrek-like affair or to the fact that it's a throwback to their late 80/early 90s musical princess heyday. Or will they attribute it to both and advertise all future movies as the opposite of the type of movie they actually are?
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Anne Hathaway, 'Next' Cover Girl

This is a gay rag here in NYC. Anne was on the holiday weekend cover promoting Love and Other Drugs, and though the inside article is dependably slim, she once again proves herself not just a wonderful celeb but a cool person and major friend of the gays.

"I was at the Empire State Pride Agenda dinner a few years ago," she recalls. "And Margaret Cho put it perfectly. She said, 'I can't believe we're still dealing with this shit!'" If a class act like Hathaway is cursing, you know she means business.

Love her. How beautiful are these photos by twin photographers The Riker Brothers?

Red Carpet Lineup: Swan Break

The New York premiere of Black Swan was held last night at the Ziegfeld which is the theater for premiere's here in Manhattan. I have so many fond memories of the place. All the stars were in attendance including Darren Aronofsky, Vincent Cassell and Barbara Hershey. Plus the deliciously dark rival ballerinas Mila, Natalie and Noni.

I think it goes without saying but I'll say it: Winona Ryder is still one of the most beautiful women on the planet. Those eyes. That coloring. Gah.

Why Noni is wearing a tux we can't be sure but we love that she did. Why Aronofsky refuses to shave that Flynn mustache we can't be sure but we wish he would. Why Natalie is carrying around Nabokov's Lolita* we... wait, what?

There's got to be a story there. I hope it does not involve obsessive fans of The Professional.


*Okay, it's apparently a clutch by Olympia Le Tan  - thx Dom - fashioned as a replica of the literary classic. The replica costs only $1,321.00 more than the real thing. But can the real thing hold your lipstick, keys and money?

Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman

Part 1: Jake Gyllenhaal at "The New Yorker Festival"

I'll share a few more interesting movie-specific quotes I couldn't find room for in this article tomorrow here at the blog. But for now a piece I wrote for Tribeca Film.

He’d be unrecognizable but for those enormous blue eyes. In fact, when Jake Gyllenhaal walked out on stage at the SVA Theater in Chelsea on Saturday night, a full bushy beard covering what seemed like all of his face, film critic David Denby didn’t even introduce him by name. “I don’t know who this guy is,” Denby joked. “He looked a little lost, so we invited him in.”

But who needs a big introduction when they’ve been headlining movies big and small for a full decade? 

Read the rest @ Tribeca Film

...for thoughts on Jake's acting process, his relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal and a famous actor he would love to emulate.
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Nathaniel's New York Film Festival: Coming Soon

The New York Film Festival starts officially on September 24th. Critics screenings have already begun but so far I've been in absentia. I have my reasons though the selection committee and certain cinephiles would surely scoff at them so they will go unnamed. This morning I picked up my credentials but opted to skip Carlos the Olivier Assayas film about Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez or "The Jackal" as he's infamously known in history and in the movies. I love Assayas (Summer Hours + demonlover = movie heaven plus rare artistic range!) but I can't do 5½ hour movies. I just can't!

That's one of the reasons people will scoff (oops. so much for unnamed). I've heard it's terrific but I know my limits. My back and ass know them, too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see it in its piecemeal French miniseries form at some point. I love serialized drama as much as anyone but for me that's a television-specific experience and it should stay where it belongs.

While exiting the Walter Reade I spotted a "coming soon" poster for Desperately Seeking Susan.


It's not every day you see a "coming soon" poster for a movie that's 25 years old starring your favorite celebrity of all time. Director Susan Seidelman will speaking to the crowd at the screening (Sept 23rd -- get your tickets) and Rosanna Arquette and Aidan Quinn will also attend. If they blasted "Into the Groove" through the speakers and Madonna made a surprise appearance in her original costume I would die on the spot with a stupid grin on my face. What a way to go.

Susan is not part of the official festival (shame) though the fest usually does have a few retros. See, NYFF isn't exactly known for comedy if you know what I mean. They lean hard on Cannes lineups but only the dour subtitled selections. If NYFF goes "mainstream" it's usually for something gloomy, like say dead children a la Clint Eastwood's Changeling but not dead children a la Rachel Getting Married because that movie was too warm and humane! I'm partially joking since I love the NYFF but that 2008 selection committee decision will haunt me forever. They crazy. I shan't ever forgive them.

My point is this: in one particular NYFF year I sat through three films in a row from multiple countries starring voyeuristic barely verbal loners who stalked / killed women. I can't even talk about it! I just can't.

For 2010, I'm most excited for the following seven in roughly this order:

• Another Year -because it's a Mike Leigh film. That's all I need.
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives -because it won the Palme D'Or and I found Apichatpong Weerathesakul's Tropical Malady so worthwhile in its enigmas.
• The Social Network -because people keep saying it's "a perfect 10".
• My Joy -because Nick loved it.
  
  
  
• Meek's Cutoff -because Michelle Williams and Kelly Reichardt's last collaboration Wendy & Lucy was so moving. I'm sometimes allergic to westerns, though, so we shall see.
• Poetry -because I still think about Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine frequently and staying power is not properly rewarded at the cinema.
• Black Venus -because even though Guy Lodge didn't love it, it sounds fascinating.
  

I'll see other pictures too but those have made me the most curious.

And because Jonathan Glazer's Birth (2004) seems to be coming up frequently in discussions round here lately, you should probably know (should you be in NYC) that one of the special events this year is an evening with film scholar David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) in which he will screen and discuss this wonderful and misunderstood picture.
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Oscar Predictions Revised: Picture, Director, Animation, Documentary, Sound

I'm working on revising the Oscar predictions. So far we've updated the extensive foreign film pages (yet, we're already behind again the news is coming so quickly), the animated and documentary categories, the aural categories like best score and song (I could use some help there -- offer it in the comments) and NEW best picture. And yes I know that many people believe that The Way Back will not be released in time. But I don't believe for a second that the current plans will keep.

About Best Director. After a banner year for diversity last year this year looks like a return to the standard. It'll take a while for cinema's burgeoning spread of voices to register on a frequent basis. If you fuse all my predicted nominees together -- that'd be David Fincher, David O. Russell (pictured left), Mike Leigh, Peter Weir and Christopher Nolan -- you've got a 54 year old white auteur with 9 films under his belt who has been nominated once before in this category and is generally perceived as overdue for a win. But why would you fuse them together? That's only something I sometimes do with statistics because I am weird.

I would have loved to predict Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (because I am a fan* in general, though I haven't yet seen the film), but here's something I fear about the new 10 wide Best Picture system. Though it gave us a nice spread of genre and mood and consensus last year, I fear the noisy mainstreaming of that category will end up drowning out the hoopla for those left of center choices that the directorial branch sometimes honored in their gutsier moments. And if my fears prove correct going forward, that'll be a real shame.

Your thoughts and armchair punditry are welcome in the comments as always.

*fan not stalker. Which I must differentiate because a friend of a friend of a friend did point out his & Rachel Weisz's apartment to me the other day quite unexpectedly, even though movies weren't even the topic of conversation. The exterior was red. That's neither here nor there. I'm just sharing for a bit of organic blog flavoring.
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Old Fashioned Marquee

I never actually see them changing one, so this was a welcome sight. So much better than digital marquees where someone's just typing on a computer.

Typing on a computer is so mundane. I'm totally going to start handwriting The Film Experience! Why should posts take a few hours to write when they could take whole days?

MM@M: No Bad Seats

Mad Men @ The Movies discusses the cinematic references in television's best series.

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Don (Jon Hamm) succumb to exhaustion.
Four seasons of great acting will knock the wind right out of you.

Episode 4.7 "The Suitcase"
This week's episode was a well timed Peggy & Don duet. The historic backdrop was the infamous boxing match between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay (Clay had already changed his name to Muhammad Ali but not everyone had acclimated to the switch. Interesting that Don in particular shows resistance to it given his own name change/reinvention). Given that context and the episode's actual content it might be more appropriate to call "The Suitcase" a well timed Peggy & Don brawl. By the end of the episode they'd put each other through ten rounds, with an actual brawl (albeit with Peggy watching rather than throwing punches). We'll call it a draw. Shockingly, they both had a good cry before the hour was out, and seemed both more vulnerable to the viewing audience and to each other; it was a brutal episode but it wound down with surprising tenderness. The two characters have so often been used as imperfect parallels and generational / gender distorted reflections of each other that moments where they come head to head like this are nearly always memorable. And a whole episode of it? I can't help but say it: "The Suitcase" was a knockout.

But, for our purposes at MM@M, it was a rare episode without any movie star / movie name dropping. The closest we came was a James Bond reference and the opening shot/scene when Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) passes out tickets to see the big match... on the big screen.

Ken: Where are these exactly?
Harry: It's a movie theater -- no bad seats.

Those seats costs $15 which is quite a hefty price tag in 1965 (the hookers a few episodes ago cost $25). The SCDP team is seeing the match broadcast live at Loew's Capitol Theater in Times Square. The legendary theater once housed world premieres like Doctor Zhivago in 1965. After the last engagement in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the theater was demolished. Sadly movie theaters like that don't exist anywhere these days, really. It had over 5000 seats and a 25' by 60' screen.

As for Harry's assertion that movie theaters have no bad seats... do you agree? I'd beg to differ as I hate the front row. I'm a middle/middle man, though lately I've taken a liking to aisle/middle/right. But anything's fine really so long as it's not the front row!
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