This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2011

We're only a few days away from the NYFCC's new early awards announcements, so why not?

This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2010
This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2009
This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2008
This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2007
end-of-2006 film stuff (detrius 2, the Richard Donner Cut)
This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2005
This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2004

Symmetry required you to start it.

The real reason I'm starting this is because Mark Harris started Oscar blogging, and his handful of columns thus far put all other Oscar blogging to shame.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/category/_/name/oscarmetrics

xpost and no one will allow themselves to misspell detritus on purpose

what in hell are the Hollywood Awards? They were given out last night.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/15th-annual-hollywood-film-awards-252837

And if you haven't heard, the NY crix have moved their prizes up to Nov 28. This is good news for Romney.

the Streep column is a real beaut, especially the stumping for Viola Davis.

I’m hammering the Streep prediction because aside from everything else, I think it’s bad guesswork. Meryl Streep is 2-and-14; in other words, she has lost more Academy Awards than any actor in history. She is zero-for-six playing real people. Phyllida Lloyd, The Iron Lady’s director, has made just one previous film, Mamma Mia!, which is not remembered for its acting (at least, not kindly). So overall, there’s little reason to believe Streep will win, especially since it’s now a near-annual ritual for prognosticators to claim that it’s her year — for Doubt, for Julie & Julia, for whatever — and then, when they find that narrative tedious, to start boosting an underdog. I guess it’s just too boring to assume that the best movie actress in the world is going to win another Oscar, which is probably why Streep has only two and not the five or six she deserves.

xpost Oy.

Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn), a top contender for the best actress Oscar...
The cast of The Help, which is a top contender for the best picture Oscar...
Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), who is a top contender for the best actress Oscar...
It was uncertain how Christopher Plummer (Beginners), the 81-year-old who is widely considered to be the frontrunner for the best supporting actor Oscar...
Diablo Cody (Young Adult), who is a top contender for the best original screenplay Oscar...
Perennial honoree George Clooney (The Descendants), who is a top contender for the best actor Oscar...
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50), who is a possible contender for the best actor Oscar...
Alberto Iglesias (The Skin I Live In), who is a top contender for the best original score Oscar
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2, which is a possible contender for the best picture Oscar...

Based on the pattern, Carey Mulligan must have really sucky Oscar chances this year.

The real reason I'm starting this is because Mark Harris started Oscar blogging, and his handful of columns thus far put all other Oscar blogging to shame.

Yes, these have been a real treat to read, and a welcome respite from Sasha Stone's daily inanities.

tho I'm sure he's better than at least one guy who'll be AA-nominated, don't wanna see Bennett Miller get any prizes dor Dumbeddownball.

at least one guy who'll be AA-nominated

Wouldn't put Woody Allen's name in stone yet.

too bad Aronofsky doesn't have a new one, eh

Thx for the new screenname, btw.

hmmm

quality #1 and 2 on the Oughties horror list, knock me over w/ a feather!

I've no problems with the top 5 at all.

Burton's Sweeney Todd missing tho

any of you boys seen Margin Call yet?

Skipped it. My dad gave it a rave on Twitter, which means Armond probably hated it.

Britindie noms, whatever they are:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/shame_tyrannosaur_and_tinker_tailor_lead_british_independent_film_award_nom/

Shame, for shame.

I saw Margin Call. If that's one of the best of the year, we're fucked.

I like how the Britindie noms seem to include pretty much any British film.

Then there are the Gotham nominees:

http://gotham.ifp.org/

Margin Call was fun.

Is Beginners going to have weight in the awards season? Christopher Plummer I can see but anything else about it? Really?

It's probably the worst film I'll watch this year.

when I use anticipation, casting, script, and audience reaction as factors.

I liked Margin Call fine, but if it makes it into Year End Top 10 lists then it's been a pretty bad year.

Has anyone here seen The Descendants?

not yet.

NYC MoMA having their annual "Contenders" series w/ some Q&As after.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1218

Will be seeing Descendents on Sunday. Missed the press screening yesterday. Expecting less than nothing.

It could be that I'm just not old and crusty enough yet to appreciate Payne when he's not dealing with over-zealous high school students.

pro-choice lesbians howling at moon ftw

Paris Je T'aime segment ftw. If The Descendants is longer than 6 minutes, I'm not so sure.

LOL, I keep forgetting he directed that segment because it was so good.

This seems by far the worst year for animated features since they had a category for them, but somehow they scraped together an eligibility list long enough to allow for 5 nominees. (Chico & Rita and Alois Nebel look promising.)

http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2011/11/5/18-animated-features-for-oscar-will-5-nominees-bring-diversi.html

The Adventures of Tintin
Alois Nebel
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
Arthur Christmas
Cars 2
A Cat in Paris
Chico & Rita
Gnomeo & Juliet
Happy Feet Two
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
Kung Fu Panda 2
Mars Needs Moms
Puss in Boots
Rango
Rio
The Smurfs
Winnie the Pooh
Wrinkles

I will always remember 2011 as the year detrius expended all its energy in the Pauline Kael thread.

Like a corpse belching what remains of its gas.

critics looooove critics

I've just come to find awards not hateable, just boring.

The Kael thread will float to the sea floor when everyone realizes how dull Brian Kellow's bio is.

I suspect about 10% of the partcipants will read it.

I'm not inclined to read it at this point. The blogasm has probably told me everything I "needed" to know.

The awesome, beautifully remodeled, $2 per ticket second-run theater I live near just started running The Help and Midnight in Paris (both of which I've avoided til now) this weekend. It may be a very detriusy weekend for me.

and possibly a wasted one.

Probably, but I have a cold and it's that or sleep. ("Or.")

Midnight is thoroughly enjoyable imo

It's nearly an hour shorter, so it has that going for it.

It needed to be a 20-minute short.

Euro Film Award noms, yay Le Havre and Essential Killing:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/european-film-award-nominations

Descendants OK-ish. Probably a soft favorite for NYFCC.

If best actor's gonna turn into Clooney vs. Pitt (who I can not for the life of me figure out why he's even in the running for a nod, much less being hyped for a win), I'll be in the former camp.

I'd be in the latter, in part because I love being proven wrong (i.e. Pitt's a more interesting screen presence this year than Clooney's been for a while).

Pitt's "in the running" for the wrong performance, as is fairly common with the AAs.

David Ehrenstein... man, what is the deal w/ that guy.

he loves comment sections!

ultimate comments whore

lol i called him out once for saying something dumb bout trans ppl in the tlrd comments section and he got pissy about it

he even commented on one of my reviews once, neutrally

He comments on THND all the time.

what's tlrd and THND? do i even want to know?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/

The only D.E. book I have is Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1927-1997

Producers Guild award to yep, u know

Some downright fantastic vitriol here:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2012/01/vulture-critics-poll-worst-movie-of-2011-ballots.html

1. Shame. Steve McQueen’s tale of pursuit-of-sexual-gratification-as-stations-of-the-cross punished its hollow shell of a protagonist (a too-game Michael Fassbender) as much as it flattered its audience by making them feel superior to him. Its acclaim isn’t mind-boggling only because it’s so clearly calibrated — in artful composition, self-serious score — to make you think you’re watching something of import. It’s actually childish, chastising, moralizing drivel so histrionic it has its main character literally wailing on his knees in front of the New York City skyline at the end. Nice dick, though.

Love when things like this happen:

Mark Kermode, BBC
1. New Year’s Eve
2. Film Socialisme

Nathan Lee and Chas Taylor very funny, but Armond's 1-2 most efficient:

We Need to Talk About Kevin. Must we?
The Help. A return to Jim Crow, now called "Viola Davis."

We Need to Talk About Kevin. Must we?

Wow. Yeah. Don't know how the movie will recover from that zingage.

I am looking fwd to the box-office sieges if Tilda gets nominated and this plays to reg'lar folks.

flattered its audience by making them feel superior to him.

Yet more evidence that I did not see the same movie as most of y'all.

we are v interested how you'd measure your superiority to Michael Fassbender, Simon.

4. A Dangerous Method. Respectable David Cronenberg makes me long for exploding heads and gash fucking.

I am looking fwd to the box-office sieges if Tilda gets nominated and this plays to reg'lar folks.

Horror always plays well to us neo-Cronenberg-hating plebes.

Gash-fucking Cronenberg and "respectable" Cronenberg equally permissible in my book.

Super 8. A movie only Spielberg-haters could love.

OTM, as the Slant DVD review proves to almost satirical degree.

After watching Super-8 I have more respect for The Goonies.

Hey now.

It's true!

I was disappointed by the number of people who seemed charmed by Super 8.

when did you see A Dangerous Method, Eric? cuz it's of a piece with his entire oeuvre.

No it's not.

what's your "neo-Cronenberg" dividing line?

Yeah I think Dangerous Method is very Cronenberg-material.

SAG gives best actor to Jean Dujardin's smile.

http://www.sag.org/screen-actors-guild-honors-outstanding-film-and-television-performances-18th-annual-screen-actors-gu

If this were to happen at the Oscars, I may grab a fork and go all Albert Brooks.

and both maids told "you is special..."

I think Dujardin winning the Oscar is a strong possibility. Pitt and Clooney split the movie-star vote; Dujardin charms everyone else and climbs over the seats like Roberto Benigni.

yes, he's the Benigni with sex apppeal instead of tastelessly misapplied comic talent

Dujardin would certainly be the first winner since Benigni whose performance was afflicted with a terminal case of the cutes.

Hazmatvicious won DGA if u missed it

(NON-OSCAR POST)

it's the AARP awards!

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/making-a-play-for-older-voters-and-moviegoers/?ref=movies

hey, guess what swept the BAFTAs

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/bafta-nominees-and-winners-2012

glad to see Senna take a prize for editing.

Lubezki won his guild award

nb: The Interrupters airs on PBS tonight

WGAs to Midnight in Paris, The Descendants

Oh, they have the cinema or cinephiles now?

http://icsfilm.org/index.php

PICTURE
01. A Separation
02. The Tree of Life
03. Mysteries of Lisbon
04. Certified Copy
05. Weekend
06. Margaret
07. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
08. Drive
09. Meek's Cutoff
10. Hugo
11. Melancholia

DIRECTOR
Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life

ACTOR
Tom Cullen – Weekend

ACTRESS
Anna Paquin – Margaret

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brad Pitt – The Tree of Life

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
J. Smith-Cameron – Margaret

Mrs Lonergan's character was the weak link in Margaret.

Tom Cullen is the boring one in Weekend, right?

y

Lord God

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/indie-spirit-awards-winners-list-the-artist-294970

flattered its audience by making them feel superior to him.

Yet more evidence that I did not see the same movie as most of y'all.

― Simon H., Monday, 23 January 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was an OK film -- not as bad as that piece of vitriol suggests, nor as good as its supporters suggest?

Not sure how the audience is made to feel superior unless its 'he is utterly devoid of charm however that does not stop him sleeping with half of New York but IS HE HAPPY?' type thing. And even if it is you can always flip this around...

Yeah, I watched the Indie Spirit Awards. Oscars will be grim. Also, Plummer's acceptance speech will go on for an hour.

Xpost

FC readers' poll

http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/readers-poll-the-20-best-film-of-2011

I like to be out front on year-end lists, so here's mine for 2011:

1. Bobby Fischer Against the World
2. Project Nim
3. Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune
4. A Separation
5. Paul Goodman Changed My Life
6. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
7. A Dangerous Method
8. Bill Cunningham New York
9. Melancholia
10. Urbanized

At least a couple aren't technically 2011, but that's when they first played here. I was holding off on this until I saw A Separation, which I did today. In all honesty, I half dragged myself to it, expecting that it wasn't for me. But it kept going in directions I didn't anticipate, the two kids were great, and it had one of those final shots where you suddenly think "End it right here," and happily the director did.

I also more or less liked the following: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Moneyball, The Ides of March, American: The Bill Hicks Story, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I didn't share in the enthusiasm for The Tree of Life or The Interrupters, although I can see where they deeply affected people. So-so: Page One: Inside the New York Times, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Into the Abyss, Contagion, Jane Eyre, The Iron Lady, Gerhard Richter Painting (technical difficulties a factor). Didn't like: Meek's Cutoff (my biggest disappointment), J. Edgar, Tabloid, Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, The Artist. Bafflement: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (While I Can't Recall Much of Anything About Uncle Boonmee).

I see I began my list on last year's detritus thread with pretty much exactly the same joke. I'm officially entering the Henny Youngman phase of my life.

Can't find a separate thread for A Separation, or for Iranian film. (Did you know that if you do an ILX search on "Iranian film," at the top of the list is the "COMEDY POLL ANNEX--which film is more racist: Napoleon Dynamite or Ghostbusters?" thread? I'm not sure I get that.) The little girl is so good. I know she's not required to do a whole lot, but her face is so expressive--she's like the kids at the puppet show in The 400 Blows, or the young Apu in Pather Panchali. I didn't know anything about the Alzheimer's thread of the story going in. I never saw the Sarah Polley film about Alzheimer's, so this was easily the best treatment I've ever seen of that subject. I was trying to think of another one, and I thought that Julia Roberts' mother might have had it in Sleeping with the Enemy, but I guess not. There was some mainstream film I saw once where the mom had Alzheimer's, and the daughter would visit her in the hospital. There must be a few of them.