2008 Awards/Critical Lists Discussion Thread

[Pop Trash]

NYFCC Awards:

Best Picture - Milk
Best Director - Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky)
Best Actor - Sean Penn (Milk)
Best Actress - Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)
Best Supporting Actor - Josh Brolin (Milk)
Best Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Best Screenplay - Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married)
Best Cinematographer - Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Foreign Film - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Best Animated Film - WALL-E
Best First Film - Courtney Hunt (Frozen River)
Best Documentary - Man on Wire

[Ezee E]

You're killing me Pop Trash.

[Ezee E]

Golden Globe Predictions:

Drama:
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Milk
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire

Comedy:
Burn After Reading
Mamma Mia!
Sex and the City
Tropic Thunder
Vicki Cristina Barcelona

Reaching out there with Sex and the City, can't really think of something else they'd nominate there. Forgetting Sarah Marshall types never get it. Happy-Go-Lucky seems too small, and I'm not sure if Wall-E qualifies, otherwise I'd go with that.

[Pop Trash]

You're killing me Pop Trash.

:|

[NickGlass]

Reaching out there with Sex and the City, can't really think of something else they'd nominate there. Forgetting Sarah Marshall types never get it. Happy-Go-Lucky seems too small, and I'm not sure if Wall-E qualifies, otherwise I'd go with that.

I think Happy-Go-Lucky will snag a spot. And, for some bizarre reason, I actually believe Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist might get a nomination somewhere in the mix (for either the film, or one of the two leads).

Also, I'm fine with Pop Trash reposting the LAFCA awards, if only to see Eddie Marsan get another (minor) mention.

[Pop Trash]

Also, I'm fine with Pop Trash reposting the LAFCA awards, if only to see Eddie Marsan get another (minor) mention.

I deleted it, if only because Ezee E is a better poster alive than dead.

[Ezee E]

I deleted it, if only best Ezee E poster alive.

Gee whiz.

[Arthur Seaton]

Peter Travers' Top Ten:

1. Milk
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. The Dark Knight
4. Frost/Nixon
5. WALL-E
6. Revolutionary Road
7. The Visitor
8. Doubt
9. Rachel Getting Married
10. Man on Wire

[Watashi]

Peter Travers' Top Ten:

Le yawn.

[Arthur Seaton]

Le yawn.

Yeah, pretty standard issue--seriously, did we expect anything else from Mr. Travers?--but I like seeing The Visitor on these year end lists. Thought it would have been forgotten.

[Raiders]

Travers does, uh, have my top three films (so far) in his top ten. But yeah, that's about as standard-issue as you can get, which is fine I guess, but pretty boring for discussion.

[Arthur Seaton]

Sorry.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Sorry.

Consider yourself warned.

[Arthur Seaton]

Consider yourself warned.

Okay, no more Peter Travers. I've learned my Match Cut lesson. In that case, i can't wait for Armond White's top ten (or whatever).

[Raiders]

It's fine to post it as we should post all we can find, but yeah, Travers isn't where I'm going to find astute opinions.

[Boner M]

John Waters' annual ArtForum list is always fun.

1 Sorry, it’s a tie: (A) Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen) Does anybody not think this is the best American movie of the year (even though it was made in Spain)? Come on, it’s got a great script, the actors look like real movie stars, and Woody Allen films Scarlett Johansson with the same obsession Paul Morrissey had for Joe Dallesandro. Gives heterosexuality a good name! (B) Love Songs (Christophe Honoré) I may be the only person who would pick this as the best foreign-language movie of the year, but what do I care if you don’t like this hipper-than-thou bisexual French musical? When the sexy, smart-ass characters burst into songs about brain tumors, saliva, and human sandwiches, I get all teary inside and realize that this is the only romantic comedy I’ve ever really loved.

2 Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine) A Marilyn Monroe look-alike lures a Michael Jackson impersonator to an island that is sort of like a cinematic Jonestown without the suicide, except for nuns who jump out of a plane piloted by Werner Herzog. Korine’s most fully realized movie doesn’t copy anybody.

3 Savage Grace (Tom Kalin) Julianne Moore in the best Isabelle Huppert role of the year. When a bad mother with good clothes fucks her sexy son, we feel downright criminal in our celluloid enjoyment.

4 Man on Wire (James Marsh) To see Philippe Petit lie down on the tightrope strung between the World Trade Center buildings as the police attempt to arrest him is to experience the most joyous defiance of the law ever seen on film.

5 The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat) A brilliant costume drama that gets down on its tripod to worship the amazingly pillowy lips of its male lead, Fu’ad Aït Aattou. The most seductively sexual on-screen storytelling since Salò.

6 My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin) I remain frozen in admiration of this homegrown masterpiece from the most reluctantly radical and humorously tortured maverick working in the movies today.

7 The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky) The director may be channeling the Dardenne brothers, but Mickey Rourke eerily reminds me of Jean Marais bringing beauty to the Beast in Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête. Just imagine Mickey’s Oscar speech!

8 Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney) Once you see this documentary about an Afghan cabbie who was at the wrong place at the wrong time in the US war on terror, you’ll feel like rioting in the streets. Go ahead. Turn over a car. It’s good for you.

9 Milk (Gus Van Sant) Sean Penn’s amazing performance as Harvey Milk will make everybody in America have a gay agenda. I also salute the director’s restraint in not showing Dan White eating Twinkies.

10 Cassandra’s Dream (Woody Allen) Colin Farrell’s best performance ever as a guilt-ridden murderer who lets his remorse eat him alive. And I’m certainly not sorry to tell you the critics were wrong on this one.

[Boner M]

Also for ArtForum (but not online, copied from here), James Quandt's typically obscure but intriguing top ten:

1 & 2. Itinéraire de Jean Bricard (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet) and Le Genou d'Artémide (Jean-Marie Straub).

3. The Headless Woman (Lucretia Martel). "Martel returns to the terrain of oblique unease among the rural bourgeoisie of Argentina in a trance film that leaves its audience as unmoored as its sleepwalking heroine."

4. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso). "One expects formal precision from Alonso, here completing his trilogy about intractable men journeying solo through hinterland, but the film's emotional amplitude is new and welcome."

5. Tony Manero (Pablo Larrain). "...Alfredo Castro gives the year's male performance as a Travolta-obsessed psycho, fixated on Saturday Night Fever but living out Vengeance is Mine in Pinochet's Chile."

6. 24 City (Jia Zhang-ke). "The extent of Jia's nostalgia for pre-free market China becomes troublingly apparent in his latest bardic contemplation of the country's recent past."

7. United Red Army (Koji Wakamatsu). "In a resurgence of Japanese cinema, Wakamatsu's ferocious three-hour chronicle of Maoist student cadres in the 1960s vies with Hirokazu Kore-eda's lovely home drama, Still Walking. As a firsthand account of leftist infighting and auto-immolation, United Red Army readily joins Oshima's Night and Fog in Japan and Godard's La Chinoise."

8. Wonderful Town (Aditya Assarat) "...Thailand provided the year's best feature-fiction debut, Assarat's melancholy portrait of a young architect from Bangkok supervising reconstruction in a tsunami-afflicted town where occluded anguish quickly turns murderous."

9. Cleopatra (Julio Bressane). "Werner Schroeter's gorgeous but oddly impersonal requiem, Nuit de Chien, aside, Bressane's ultranutty vision of the Egyptian queen was the film maudit of 2008."

10. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas).

[eternity]

"The most seductively sexual on-screen storytelling since Salò."

Good lord.

[Bosco B Thug]

Dead-on. I remain amazed by the sycophantic reviews for a movie so unabashedly amateurish and contemptful of its audience.

For the record, I would so take issue with this post and that review (the friendliest sort of issue, of course, though Nayman probably deserves a little something or other) but sorry, I don't think I'm up to it. And noo it's not because Diary of the Dead really sucks. This'll probably end up as a "Whatever man" argument, because I'm sorry, Nayman's review is terrible.

Contemptful? I don't see it. And I know we're in general disagreement here, but were reviews sycophantic? I know Lee and Wood and Kenny etc. etcetera. They have enough clout to be able to go all hyperbolic with praise, without Romero deserving any blame for it. I got the gist reviews were hardly lavishing but that they recognized something in the film and its general eccentricity, which is currently where I've decided to place the nuance I personally see in the film.

[Arthur Seaton]

Golden Globe noms:

Best Motion Picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Reader
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Burn After Reading
In Bruges
Happy-Go-Lucky
Mamma Mia
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Supporting Actor
Tom Cruise - Tropic Thunder
Robert Downey Jr. - Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes - The Duchess
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight

Best Director
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
Steven Daldry - The Reader
David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
Sam Mendes - Revolutionary Road

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio - Revolutionary Road
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

Best Original Song
"Down to Earth" -- WALL-E
"Gran Torino" - Gran Torino
"I Thought I Lost You" -- Bolt
"Once in a Lifetime" -- Cadillac Records
"The Wrestler" -- The Wrestler

Best Original Score
Defiance
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
Changeling

Best Animated Film
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E

Best Foreign Language Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex
Gomorrah
I've Loved You So Long
Waltz with Bashir


Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio - Revolutionary Road
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

Best Actress
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Kristen Scott Thomas - I've Loved You So Long
Kate Winslet - Revolutionary Road

Best Actor - Musical or Comedy
Javier Bardem -- Vicki Cristina Barcelona
Colin Farrell - In Bruges
James Franco -- Pineapple Express
Brendan Gleeson - In Bruges
Dustin Hoffman - Last Chance Harvey

Best Actress - Musical or Comedy
Rebecca Hall - Vicki Cristina Barcelona
Sally Hawkins - Happy-Go-Lucky
Francis McDormand - Burn After Reading
Meryl Streep - Mamma Mia
Emma Thompson - Last Chance Harvey

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams - Doubt
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis - Doubt
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler
Kate Winslet - The Reader

[kamran]

Big snubs of Milk and The Dark Knight, but it still won't affect their Best Picture/Director chances.

[Ezee E]

Gran Torino slowly disappearing.

[Boner M]

Tom Cruise? WTF.

Yay for Franco and Gleeson, though.

[Watashi]

Well.... those were unexpected.

[Boner M]

Miley Cyrus FTW