This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2007

I usu hate Hawke too, but less so when he plays rogues -- Hamlet, the guy in Tape. I'll be seeing that Lumet Monday it seems.

no one wants to bet vs. Once securing that Little Sacchaine Pill That Could best picture nomination, right?

I predicted that a couple months ago, stopped a month ago when I realized how completely, irreparably insignificant the movie is, and am now back to predicting it again.

Spielberg said he loves it.

LOL

Yeah, but ... there's crap-looking of the Little Miss Sunshine variety and crap-looking of the Once variety. The latter makes dogme movies look like Vincente Minnelli.

There is nothing that has even the whiff of innovative/adventurous cinematic tehnique in YCCoMe, which disqualifies it from that level of praise.

small-minded bullshit

WHITHER THE RACK FOCUS?!

Jed - I'm hestitant to recommend Into The Wild to anyone, because I can easily see how it might put many viewers' backs up.

sorry croupier, if something's one of the best ten FILMS of the last 8 years I expect it to be FILMIC, not a conventional narrative Rex Reed can follow while texting Lauren Bacall.

I can easily see how it might put many viewers' backs up.

These are the only films I feel like recommending.

Alba, i basically agree with Morbius. whether i like it or not i'm very interested in seeing it. i won't hold it against you if i loathe it.

it got the main review in Sight & Sound fwiw. i haven't read it yet though.

what's a detrius?

I expect it to be FILMIC, not a conventional narrative

Why are these two opposed?

Also, I thought your point was not that YCCOM is a conventional narrative as much as the fact that it doesn't take advantage of it being a film rather than a book or a play. (Books and plays can have unconventional narratives, too.)

I'm not bothered by the conventional narrative, nor by the failure to take advantage of the medium. If it were a play, I'd probably love it, too. But it's not. Am I to fault it just because Lonergan decided to put it on celluloid instead of on a stage?

I'm not BOTHERED by it either, John (and that IS what I meant by conventional). I think the Stylus list preferring it as a decade-definer to Wong kar-Wai, Tsai, Chereau, Panahi, Aoyama, Gondry, Maddin, George Washington, The Virgin Suicides, Inland Empire or Kung Fu Hustle is where the "filmic" criterion should enter the picture.

you must regurgitate the correct arthouse cliches in order to be filmic, you know.

reminds me of huston complaining about how time magazine used to have a "best shot in the movie" part of the review and it was always something like a shot of someone reflected in a door handle.

trolling begins 5 hours in.

5.5 hours too late

Main Entry:
film·ic Listen to the pronunciation of filmic
Pronunciation:
\ˈfil-mik\
Function:
adjective
Date:
circa 1930

: of, relating to, or resembling motion pictures

I guess when I think of what films can achieve that books or plays can't, it's less a matter of narrative and more of a matter of visual techniques: cinematography and editing. Although I suppose that editing may make unconventional narratives more fluid and immediate than they would be in another medium.

defining the best examples of an artform by what it can do "better" than other artforms ignores a fuckload of what an artform can do. also inspires people to use redundant adjectives in all caps to describe their criteria. this marienbad shit got debunked 40 years ago so sorry if I sound trollish about it.

what's a detrius?

You know, like a running joke.

I love this thread already. I should always start them sooner, so that they don't immediately get bogged down in Atonement and Michael Clayton purgatory.

You Can Count On Me would have been a fucking banal short story, so Lonergan gets major points for finding the right medium.

So, I'm sorry, where was Munich supposed to be in the master list: above or below the Lonergan?

no mags gonna have The Ten in their top ten so fuck em

this marienbad shit got debunked 40 years ago

elaborate please

I understand the writers strike is affecting awards season screenings or something like that.

Are the writers branch (is the writers branch?) obligated to not nominate screenplays if, come Oscar time, the strike is still on?

elaborate please

Marienbad held to a higher standard than well-made American junk because it starred people speaking foreign languages and had cool cinematography.

this marienbad shit got debunked 40 years ago

elaborate please

I'm a big ol' fan of "Circles & Squares" by Pauline Kael. It's in her I Lost It At The Movies book if you haven't read it.

It basically tears Sarris and auteur theory (as it stood in the 60s, when it meant more than "directors are cool") a couple new cornholes.

Pauline Kael was a fine writer and a reverse snob. Never reviewed a Fassbinder film.

jaymc, with the same actors it would've been just as good a stage play.

xp

no Eric, way down. Cruel Winter Blues got a single #1 only and is 12th overall.

have you read 'circles & squares' morbs?

Maybe someone thought there were already too many American movies on the list?

I like a lot of the shorter reviews toward the end of I Lost It At The Movies (I think there was an appendix there, right?). Kael should've maybe considered devoting more energy to capsule reviews.

5001 Nights At the Movies condenses most of the long pieces into capsules.

nah, that's a different book. Her capsule reviews are great (I have a beaten up copy of 1001 nights at the movies) but I wish I'd see a dis that actually implies the person has actually considered her opinions rather than flinched when they saw she didn't like 8 1/2.

x-post, obv

xp Eric

or jaymc's theory, the Spielberg Quota of One.

I have no idea, croupier. I read a bunch of the collected book stuff in the '70s and '80s. Is that the "come dressed as the Sick Soul of Europe" piece?

So, of the few films I've seen so far this year, I'd say Day Night Day Night gets my "bipolar ambivalence of the year" award, where I can't seem to decide whether I like it a lot more or a lot less than I suspect. Previous winners of this award are Anatomy of Hell and The Notebook.

kiss kiss bang bang is the book with the appendix.

nah, sick soul deals with marienbad itself, but i was talking about her essay about people who say movies should be more filmic.

jaymc, with the same actors it would've been just as good a stage play.

Are you talking to me or Alfred? Because I mostly agree, but I also don't fault it for that. As I said before, just because it's on film doesn't make the script or the performances any less appealing.

(Although one thing that it would lose as a play is the spontaneity of Mark Ruffalo swatting a bug away from his face on the back porch. Or Laura Linney silently, happily waving at him from behind the restaurant window: on a stage, you'd lose the sense of separation in this image.)

If it's really a one-per-director thing, I have no problem ditching Munich for A.I. ...

Yeah, KKBB, then. I wasn't really talking about the condensed long form ones but the ones, rather, it appeared she really did write to be short.

there are good movies that could be good plays and bad movies that could be good plays. being a good play doesn't mean its a bad movie.

or vice versa. Network is like a great play turned into a so-so movie

clip from a different essay, but gives you the vibe

http://keepingmybrainalive.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-there-cure-for-film-criticism-or.html

(And I didn't mean the short reviews thing to be a dis. I am, after all, the resident De Palma nut who thinks her Dressed To Kill review is among the finest pieces of single-film criticism evah.)

(so croupier, was I reading Kael before you were a gleam in yr parents' eyes?)

my "bipolar ambivalence of the year" award wd possibly go to Colossal Youth -- did that make it to Mpls?

jmc, I only saw YCCoMe once, I'll have to pass on that level of detail. I only said it's not in the top 10 of the decade, fer Godsakes. It's very good!

Hey I'M the DePalma nut, buddy!

Film aestheticians are forever telling us that when they have discovered what the motion picture can do that the other arts can't do, they have discovered the "essence," the "true nature" of motion picture art. It is like the old nonsense that man is what differentiates him from the other animals . . . And what motion picture art shares with other arts is perhaps even more important than what it may, or may not, have exclusively. . . Except for the physical presence of the actors in a theater, there is almost no "difference" between stage and screen that isn't open to question; there is almost no effect possible in one that can't be simulated, and sometimes remarkably well achieved, in the other.

Most Lars and the Real Girl comments seem to lead here...Not what I thought it was going to be--I expected a comedy, not a somewhat morbid mood piece. I could never really accept the film's central conceit, the idea that the whole town would play along, but other than that, some nice moments. I remembered Paul Schneider from All the Real Girls--he's really good, not sure why he doesn't get bigger parts or more attention. Kelli Garner and Emily Mortimer very good too. Gosling, I don't know--kind of mannered.

The Muriels' 10-years-later poll ... Zodiac tops.

http://www.murielawards.org/07anniv.html

1. Zodiac (dir. David Fincher) [193 points / 30 votes]

2. There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) [193 points / 28 votes]
3. No Country For Old Men (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen) [174 points / 27 votes]
4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik) [71 points / 11 votes]
5. Death Proof (dir. Quentin Tarantino) [62 points / 10 votes]
6. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes) [48/8]
7. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu) [34/6]
8. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) [33/5]
9. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel) [31/5]
10. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton) [30/6]

Kind of a shit year, actually.