20 February 2009

Skandies: #1



Best Picture: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (241/20)






Best Director: Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light (274/16)
Skandie history: None.






Best Actress: Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (356/24)
Skandie history: None.






Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler (326/23)
Skandie history: #2 in Supporting, Frank Miller's Sin City (2005)






Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (430/28)
Skandie history: 1st in Lead, Brokeback Mountain (2005); 12th in Supporting, Lords of Dogtown (2005)






Best Supporting Actress: Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (271/19)
Skandie history: None.






Best Screenplay: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Burn After Reading (318/20)
Skandie history: 3rd for Fargo (1996), 7th for The Big Lebowski (1998), 4th for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 3rd for The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), 2nd for No Country for Old Men (2007).






Best Scene: Sunrise, Silent Light (149/11)
[Unfortunately, this is completely unwatchable on low-res video. Most of it is just a bunch of indistinct pixels. If you haven't already seen it on a big screen, you'll only shrug.]

Complete results available here. Thanks to all voters, and especially to Mark Pittillo for programming the automated ballot and maintaining the website. Brief post-mortem (plus the winner of Beat MuseMalade; someone did again) coming over the weekend.

42 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have the results of the Beat MuseMalade contest?

md'a said...

Coming over the weekend. I want to put together a brief summary post, but I just now got the average ratings and have tons of sad pathetic stats to crunch. (I plan to include here some of the stuff that used to be available only to voters and the Movie Nerd Discussion Group—there's a like 50-page .pdf file every year.)

Also, since it noted it belatedly and some people may have missed it, you can now find the complete results for each category, along with exactly who voted for what and other ephemera, at the main website.

Anonymous said...

I see that "Depardieu's poker buddy with wild, dark hair" and "Cab driver" received votes in the supporting actor and actress categories respectively.

I can't say I'm overly impressed with the voter (or voters) in terms of their dedication to figuring out who exactly they were voting for.

I don't blame Mike for not looking up who exactly these votes were for. Instead, my inclination would have been to discard any votes for performers that didn't identify the performers by name.

md'a said...

Actually, both of the voters in question wrote me to say that they'd tried and failed to determine the actor's identity, asking whether they could vote for them anyway. And I said Sure.

Anonymous said...

In regards to the third comment on this page, my inclination would be to disregard any commenters who didn't identify themselves... but I'm not as uptight as our Anonymous ballot dictator and, thankfully, neither is Mike.

Depardieu's poker buddy is a scene stealer and in a post-screening e-mail to a friend, I made myself a note to remember him come Skandies time.

If LANGEAIS were available on video (or even on video-on-demand), I would have taken the time and delighted in a second viewing to figure out the actor's name. As it was I scoured the cast list, trailers and reviews to try to figure out the character's name. In the end, I rolled with the descriptive tag because if you can't have a little fun while filling out your Skandie's ballot, what's the point.

I can't believe I'm justifying myself to an Anonymous dude.

Also, for one last time, DUCHESS wuz robbed. The AVB collectively rated the film the sixth best of the year (above MAN ON WIRE and DARK KNIGHT), but it doesn't place in the top twenty. Criminal.

(Nevermind that it was my 2.0 for MAN ON WIRE that caused it to rank just below DUCHESS. Of course, a couple of key people that abstained from voting this year would have surely knocked it above and beyond, in all respects.)

Anonymous said...

What's with the dude who gave points to all those non-existent scenes from 10,000 B.C.? "Tender autopsy of Alyssa Milano"...?

Anonymous said...

cstults, I've been scouring ISP numbers and pings trying to identify our anonymous commenter, and I simply can't. So for the purposes of this discussion, let's just call him Dickless Retard Wasting Time at Work #3, shall we?

Anonymous said...

Good job.

I'm sure you've been asked this before, and you're probably tired of it, but how much influence do you think an early pan from you (Waltz with Bashir, Wendy & Lucy) et al, might have on the voting group?

md'a said...

What's with the dude who gave points to all those non-existent scenes from 10,000 B.C.? "Tender autopsy of Alyssa Milano"...?

Yeah, seriously, what's with that dude?

(For the record, I had no idea until today that those scenes were imaginary, not having seen 10,000 B.C.. When his ballot came in I was all, man, why were more people not talking about this clearly insane picture?)

As for the unidentified actors, I should also note that it doesn't remotely matter since I'm manually correcting the ballots as they arrive to ensure that all names are spelled exactly the same—the automated ballot chokes on even the slightest discrepancy. (There were a number of glitches this year that Mark "the god" Pittillo eventually determined were being caused because in some cases there was a single space after an actor's name.) So if other people had voted for the poker buddy or the cab driver, those names would have been normalized, assuming of course that I was able to identify them.

md'a said...

I'm sure you've been asked this before, and you're probably tired of it, but how much influence do you think an early pan from you (Waltz with Bashir, Wendy & Lucy) et al, might have on the voting group?

I would guess some. I mean, it didn't stop people from voting for stuff like Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Pan's Labyrinth and Inland Empire, so I'm frequently ignored, which is as it should be. And in the case of e.g. Wendy and Lucy I actually weighed in well after much of the AVB saw the film, since it was at Toronto and I waited for the NYFF screening; it had been generally pretty well liked and I had to say Y'all are wack. But I'd like to think I'm a persuasive enough writer that I can sometimes make folks see a film in a new light. (On the flip side, it was the AVB's love of The Prestige that inspired me to give it a second mind-altering chance, so it works both ways.)

Ryan said...

Chris, poke around. I think you can find a way to score the LANGEAIS/NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE on the intertubes.

htfernandes said...

In portuguese it really sounds funny: "Retardado Capado Matando Tempo no Trampo #3". Try it, hehehe

What does "Blood Simple" stands for? It was translated here as "Gosto de Sangue" (something like Taste of Blood or Blood Flavor), but I doubt it's correct...

Does anyone know how can I get "Primer" with subtitles (in english, no problem)? It's just impossible to find this film here in Brazil.

md'a said...

Blood Simple is more or less akin to Blood Stupid. "Simple" as in simple-minded.

Anonymous said...

I suspect they're not imaginary scenes, just not from that movie.
(10,000 BC was the default entry when filling out the ballot.) The Alyssa Milano one is, based on a quick Google search, very likely from PATHOLOGY.

Though I hope Mr. Waters will come and illuminate us on the rest; I want to know where "Parkour brat blown up rocket launcher" comes from..

Anonymous said...

Quickie bug report: the Skandies site still says "2007" in the title field.

Anonymous said...

These mystery scenes all sound suspiciously like search terms one would enter into Google to try to identify a vaguely remembered movie.

I also can't help but notice that, apropos of the Skandies, they all sound like scenes I could imagine appearing in an as-yet-unfilmed Skander Halim script. Hell, THE TENDER AUTOPSY OF ALYSSA MILANO could even be the title.

Anonymous said...

As the person who voted for the cab driver in JCVD (I've since found out her name is Jenny de Chez ... any way to change it?) ...

What Stults said.

I did try to find out her name. You can fairly criticize us Skandie voters for anal-retentiveness and obsessiveness, but hardly laziness and lack of due diligence. (I won't be a dick about mentioning the film I went to considerable expense and eight hours of driving to see before deadline).

But De Chez is not credited at the IMDb and I couldn't access the film's own site on the day I devoted to filling out my ballot. I couldn't find her name very quickly scanning a few reviews, so I just asked Mike if he had the name (also hoping other people had remembered her scene-stealing performance, the perfect cabdriver from hell).

But Mike didn't, so I voted for "(cab driver)". And I did so knowing, by the way, that Mike's not having her name meant I was almost certainly the only vote for her.

Luis Calil said...

Hamilton, give me your e-mail, I'll send you the subtitles.

Steve C. said...

Just to clarify: The tender autopsy of Alyssa Milano in indeed from PATHOLOGY. Which is way better than it has any right to be, by the by.

Oh, also, that's a big SPOILER for PATHOLOGY. Sorry.

htfernandes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Berger said...

Damn, its much funnier to imagine someone coming up with made up scenes from 10,000 BC like "Beauty allows lesbian crush pity finger-fuck" and "Parkour brat blown up rocket launcher"

md'a said...

Wait, I did vote for the Silent Light sunrise. Why did I think I hadn't? Disregard.

Ryan said...

Which movie contains a scene described as "Beauty allows lesbian crush pity finger-fuck"? Please provide title in the comments section immediately if you can figure it out. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Could that be Water Lilies?

Anonymous said...

Luis, Hamilton ... I would delete that email as soon as the other has seen it ... you DON'T want to leave that out to be scooped up by spammers.

Luis Calil said...

I've got it, feel free to delete.

Anonymous said...

"I'm sure you've been asked this before, and you're probably tired of it, but how much influence do you think an early pan from you (Waltz with Bashir, Wendy & Lucy) et al, might have on the voting group?"

This is known as The D'Angelo Factor, in which D'Angelo's personal quirks are reflected in the voting results. It's not so much that the AVB is swayed by D'Angelo's individual reviews, it's that it's he who selects the AVB, and he's naturally more likely to select people who line up with his own tastes (although to his credit, he's recently admitted some voters whose general taste he considers wack).

This is all to say that WALTZ and WENDY wuz robbed. Have both Film Comment and NSFC's Best Picture winners ever not even placed in the top 20 before? (Thanks, Encyclopedia Gromit.)

Anonymous said...

Hopefully the voter will discreetly notify MD'A what movies their "10,000 B.C." scenes were actually from.

Anonymous said...

Thanksbud: I looked up the NSFC winners to start, and twice before their winner has failed to make the Skandies Top 20: "The Pianist" in 2002 and "Capote" in 2005.

I don't see any other years before 2008 where the winner of the Film Comment critics' poll has missed the Skandies Top 20, although I can't find some years' results at Filmlinc.com. I'm missing the results from 2001, 2004, and 2007. On the other hand, the years I can't find are all years where the NFSC winner is known to have made the Skandies Top 20.

Therefore, 2008 must be the only year in which both the NFSC and Film Comment winners have missed the Skandies Top 20.

Anonymous said...

If I recall correctly, Michele Laroque managed to make the top 20 in Supporting Actress back in 1997 for "Ma vie en rose" while getting multiple votes where she was listed as "The Mom."

Anonymous said...

I realize now that the identity of the "10,000 BC" scene voter has been identified, so I guess it doesn't matter how discreetly he corrects his votes.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and one more word of admonishment for DRWT@W#3, re Skandie voters' "laziness." It's very important to remember that the Skandies are a Pro/Am joint, really one of the only polls of its kind. So there are many voters who don't have things like press kits at their fingertips, presuming the pertinent info was available there in any case.

Skanides: We Jam Econo.

Unknown said...

I suspect the parkour rocket launcher scene is from Punisher: War Zone.

The lesbian crush scene must be Water Lilies, though I've no idea why I have no recollection of it.

Michele Laroque was very good.

DW and AW, boo on you for being Less Selective than me.

Kza said...

"Parkour brat blown up rocket launcher" is undoubtedly from Punisher: War Zone and is indeed a pretty good moment, although I would've voted for "Haneke-esque face blown-off shotgun", if I were a Skandie voter.

Anonymous said...

----SPOILERS FOR "WATER LILIES," A DUMB MOVIE YOU SHOULDN'T BOTHER WITH ANYHOW----

"THE SCENE"


This is the scene where the popular attractive synchronized swimmer chick asks the awkward boyish one for "help," since she's a virgin and will soon be deflowered by some hot hunky boy but is afraid it will hurt. So she asks awkward chick (who has a serious lesbian crush on her) to kindly finger-fuck her so as to pop her cherry ahead of time. FWIW, it's not hot. It's really rather sadistic, since it's largely a mindfuck on the part of the hot chick.

Steve C. said...

Yes. If we're going to vote for WAR ZONE BY MARVEL at all, it should be for the shotgun scene. Though "Fist punch clean through emo gangster face" is pretty close. And now that I think about it, sure why not to the rocket launcher.

Man, that film's a whole mess of retarded gory fun.

Nictate said...

Nice job on the #1 picks, Skandies voters. It's like all is right with the world again. I wish y'all were running the big show on the 22nd.

Kza said...

See, now I'm feeling bad I didn't give THE PUNISHER NOT AN INCEST DRAMA a little love, scene-wise, in the Muriels. I guess I thought I used up my trash slot on PATHOLOGY and had to fill out the rest with tasteful shit. I am a coward in my opinion.

Steve C. said...

Hey, I neglected to allot a slot to "NINJAS!!! IN!!! MIDDLE-EARTH!!!" So you are not alone in my opinion.

Interloper said...

the mystery has been solved by others, but it is I, Daniel Waters, who is the luddite who messed up much of my scene-age...the breakfast recap in Pineapple express would have placed higher, the Waterlillies naysayer actually made the scene sound more awesome than it was and it was awesome. Pathology and punisher 2 were correctly identified and are both chock full of Skandie worthy moments. Nothing touches the Bobby Sands/priest conversation from Hunger, coming to NY in 09. Next year's 4 Months...

Interloper said...

Oh, and Silent Light was a much better Ordet than Wendy and Lucy was an Umberto D. By the way, do I have the lowest Selectivity index ever? I feel like a slut

Unknown said...

Gromitting...sub-50 Selectivity Index, 2001-on

37 Fung [2006]
42 Fung [2004]
43 Johnston [2001], Wright [2001]
44 Waters [2008]
45 Johnston [2002]
46 Wright [2008]
47 Fung [2007]
48 Wright [2005], Fung [2008]
49 Wright [2002], Heilman [2003], Wright [2004], Frazer [2008]