Picture: True Grit (94/13)
Director: Marco Bellocchio, Vincere (93/9)
Actress: Isabelle Huppert, White Material (113/12)
Actor: Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Father of My Children (91/9)
S. Actor: Michael Fassbender, Fish Tank (80/9)
S. Actress: Paz de la Huerta, Enter the Void (86/8)
Screenplay: Robert Harris & Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer (86/7)
Scene: Police and informant crash apartment party, Carlos (49/5)
[Watch it here; you need to turn subtitles on just below the video. WARNING: Gun violence.]
HISTORY:
Bellocchio's first appearance.
Huppert ties Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman as the second-most-honored actor in Skandie history, with nine appearances in the top 20. In chronological order:
#15, La Cérémonie (1996)
#8, The School of Flesh (1999)
#2, The Piano Teacher (2002)
#2s, 8 Women (2002)
#17, Time of the Wolf (2004)
#13s, I ♥ Huckabees (2004)
#4, Gabrielle (2006)
#19, Home (2009)
Fassbender gets his third nod in the past two years, having placed twice in 2009: 5th in the lead category for Hunger, 14th in Supporting for Inglourious Basterds. De Lencquesaing and De la Huerta (if I'm getting those surnames right) are new.
The Ghost Writer is Harris' first screenplay (though he's had other novels adapted), and Polanski's screenplay for The Ninth Gate failed to make the cut (his other recent films were written by others).
20 comments:
Paz de la Huerta? Seriously?
Nobody gave points to Nathaniel Brown, though, right?
...Right??
Paz de la Huerta?!?!? That's even worse than the Polanski scene, which is at least IS well done if you ignore the retardedness.
Paz de la Huerta cannot recite a line convincingly. I am truly ashamed of y'all ... think with the organ intended for that purpose, guys.
Paz is spectacular in the role: raw, crying, hysterical, warm & fuzzy and in sync with the movie. She deserves this award. Glad to see Fassbender getting one too.
Enter the Void had acting? It's just a blur of camerawork in my memory.
True Grit is the best movie of the year, for the record. I have to assume the Coens' screenplay will be making an appearance on this list, as the possibility of Polanski and Harris making it over Joel and Ethan does not exist in a rational universe.
Good point, witherholly. While I completely disagree with your assessment regarding the achingly gorgeous Runaways scene that rightly made the top 20, I am in full agreeance with you on Paz. Without her soulful, gritty presence the movie would collapse. Glad to see some other voters had the same reaction and am just sorry she did not make the top 10.
What's with the complaints? The performance of Paz's prosthetic vagina on its own deserves a gold Skandie statuette.
Wait...didn't Gaspar just throw some baby oil on the one Pedro built for Talk To Her?
Nah, Michael ... that would have better command of its expressions.
"THIS CITY IS EEEEEVIL! EEEEEVIL!"
Nice to see Paz de la Huerta place so high. I assumed I would be basically alone in giving her points. I wonder if this means I can still hold out hope for Douglas Urbanski placing for THE SOCIAL NETWORK.
"Ip Man" should be a shoe-in for a spot in the best scene category. I'm talking about that wonderful part where Donnie Yen calls out 10 Japanese guys and absolutely obliterates them. He punches so fast!
Eh...sorry, Freddy. It would appear that a whopping majority of the AVB did not even see Ip Man. So no dice on that.
FWIW, this is probably a pretty big oversight on our part. After all, it was (along with Red Cliff) one of the biggest pan-Asian smash hits of the last several years, and no doubt worth a look. I kept meaning to PPV it, but I couldn't shake the memory of Wilson Yip's serviceable but empty SPL, and couldn't summon up the gumption.
Ip Man is definitely worth watching, and I'm someone who has a tough time enjoying martial arts movies. I had never heard of it until I noticed Ip Man 2 getting good reviews. So I Netflix Instant Watched it before seeing the sequel (which is basically Rocky IV, and is to be avoided; the good reviews are baffling).
I adore everything about The Ghost Writer...EXCEPT the screenplay. There has to be a NO USE OF GOOGLE IN THE THIRD ACT rule somewhere. I mean, he literally looks up on the internet that Tom Wilkinson is the villain!
Pretty soon you'll be saying "no use of facebook in civilian uprising." What exactly is your beef?
When any idiot's first go-to default move…googling…unlocks an entire web of conspiracy…that's pretty lazy detective work…and extremely lazy screenwriting.
Re: the googling, I didn't mind that at all. It's cracking down on a movie way too hard to nitpick that kinda stuff, IMO. Or at least when said movie is as good as the Ghost Writer is.
Fassbender, Polanski, and the Carlos scene (better than most of the rest of the movie, IMO) are so very deserving.
"Serviceable but empty"… yep, that's Donnie Yen in a nutshell.
Although I admire the action scenes and Donnie Yen's performance from the Ip Man films (the second movie does indeed go way downhill once it turns into Rocky), SPL is actually the only Wilson Yip movie I've seen that truly worked for me.
As far as recent martial arts pictures go, I think Ong Bak 2 towers over Tony Jaa's other movies and has been really underappreciated by martial arts fans and critics alike. Then again, I might be the only person who actually enjoyed the moment when Jaa halted the story for 5-10 minutes to showcase a couple dance performances.
I also loved Indonesia's Merantau, which is now available on Netflix streaming. It contains a ton of kickass action but is also surprisingly touching IMO. (Sorry for discussing movies that didn't place or even qualify for this list.)
History note: Also, this is Bellocchio's first Skandies citation for Best Director. (He did direct the #13 Skandies Undistributed film of 2002, My Mother's Smile.)
Post a Comment