Papa Linkes
Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 11:00PM AV Club Excellent "Why don't you like this?" argument over Hugo. I liked Hugo more than Tasha does but significantly less than Scott but I found the Moulin Rouge! comparisons especially fascinating.
Movies.com crunches the numbers on Best Director, with 15 directors already honored somewhere or somehow.
Vulture who had the bluest eyes in War Horse? Not Joey, the humans.
Roger Ebert on why movie theater audience is down. Normally I think this topic is overworked but he gets a few really succinct points in and I had no idea that Netflix's instant watch streaming numbers show a preference for art film fare!
First Showing David Fincher on why he made each of his pictures. That people are still wondering why he felt he needed to make Dragon Tattoo even after seeing it, is maybe a problem. :)
Movie|Line I lol'ed heartily reading this calendar of dates to watch in 2012
Movies.com David Ehrlich's writes a quite funny piece on the "Overrated" titles of 2011
What are you doing New Year's Eve? ♫
Ahhhhh (500) Days of Summer reunion for Winter!
Indiewire the top ten box office hits, subtitled division. France rules as per usual.
Anne Thompson on why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is struggling at the box office.
Cinema Blend on disappointing films of the year. Death to hype!
Finally... I wanted to take this moment to say goodbye to Cheetah from the Tarzan movies who supposedly died this past weekend. A lot of chimps played Cheetah of course as there are a ton of Tarzan movies and The Wall Street Journal claims this could not have actually been the one from the Weismuller/O'Sullivan movies. Supposedly Cheetah was 80 but life expectancies for his species is like 35 so that's baffling. Human life expectancy is like 67 years and how many 140somethings do you know? It seems weird to say "favorite thing!" about obituary madness but I was delighted to see Mia Farrow tweeting about it.
I'd been debating whether or not to make a big to do of Tarzan's centennial in 2012 (October to be exact) though I suspect most readers aren't into that particular swinger since comments tend to be lowsville on Tarzan moments here. That's one franchise that really seems dead. RIP.
David Fincher, Directors, Hugo, Mia Farrow, RIP, Tarzan, zoology
Reader Comments (18)
Nat, just curiosity, Do you think Ms. Mara can sneak into the best actress race? She's got an EW's cover on the same week the ballots out.
Read both the Dragon Tattoo articles because I just saw the movie. I think it tried to replicate the Black Swan magic last year where it's an edgy thriller with a Best Actress prospect. It was almost my favourite Fincher (they all are) but money is money and so it goes. Also, the cat.
Not to be nitpicky, but it's Maureen O'Sullivan, not Maureen O'Hara, in the Tarzan series. Although I'd find them infinitely more watchable if they had starred the latter.
I'm proud that I saw four of the ten foreign films in actual theaters (and a fifth will be heading to me from Netflix soon). Though my local theater generally only gets the French ones.
I dunno if this is just me, but the Cinema Blend link takes to me to some comic book page?? lol
The whole thing about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo really pisses me off more than Fincher and the movie probably deserve. But you just can't list five reasons why people aren't watching the movie and avoid to mention probably the most important one: it is a remake of a movie just seen. One would think they learned their lesson with Let Me In, but no. People have just seen this very same story. Period. Had it happened in ten years people would've seen it massively.
The movie has been hyped since the audition process, the shooting while The Social Network was getting awards, and every once in a while we've been fed stills, posters, clips and whatnot. Then the movie screens and gets embargoed (if you know you've made a masterpiece, you just don't embargo the reviews) the embargo is broken and everyone gets pissed because the "momentum" they had so carefully artificially built is broken. They should be grateful the media always avoid to focus on the fact that it is one of those instant remakes of foreign movies, and that it's the first part of a franchise.
/End of rant.
Happy New Year!
Brooooke and Lucy -- sorry. i don't know where my head is at lately... or my hand eye coordination. yeesh. fixed.
Iggy -- yeah, there is that.
chand -- i've heard other people say it but it just doesn't seem like that kind of role to me without the proper momentum (i.e. without the film's wide debut just blasting things apart (war horse got MUCH more attention over christmas) but i might be wrong. not everyone is as obsesssed with the movie as awards daily ;)
on the other hand if some voters aren't that obsessed with the reigning 5 women there might be room. I think voter indifference to frontrunners is always what opens up windows of opportunities for surprise nominees (i.e. someone looking for an interesting place to put their vote) BUT as i've been saying since like June and people aren't really picking up on... i think a good portion of the lack of momentum for the 20something women this year was that there was virtually no consensus... lots of split opinions about who was doing worthy work and no snowballing momentum for any of them: DUNST, JONES, OLSEN, KNIGHTLEY, MARA too many of them and until Rooney Mara no "hits" and even hers isn't a smash despite its mainstream accessibility (don't let anyone else fool you. that franchise is so mainstream. i don't know what people are on about when they say otherwise)
The other thing with Best Actress is that, when given the opportunity to stampede with the same five nominees, this category more than any other acting categories it seems the Academy signs on with concensus (2002, 2004, 2006, 2009). About the only time in the last ten years I can think of where the a true concensus pick got shut out was Jolie for A Mighty Heart. There's probably another one that I can't think of, but I'm feeling fairly confident in the Davis/Williams/Swinton/Streep/Close quintet.
As the years go by, I grow more and more tired of the word "overrated" (although David Erlich, to his credit, at least seems to be poking fun at the concept with the whole "menace" thing). Why are people so in love with this word? It has such a nasty connotation, i.e., "I am right, and everyone else is WRONG WRONG WRONG."
Why don't people just say, "I thought this movie was bad," or "I thought this movie was uneven," or even, "I didn't like this movie as much as other people did"? Because they're afraid that puts some kind of onus on them to defend their opinions, so they figure that it's just easier to dismiss everyone else? It doesn't make sense to me. What does it matter what everyone else thinks of the movie? Why not just say what you thought and why you thought it? It seems to me to be a case of serious intellectual laziness.
If I never heard the words "overrated" or "pretentious" in regards to movies again, I would be a very happy camper.
I'm tentatively looking forward to Dragon Tattoo. I'm not a Fincher fan per se, but I loved The Social Network. And I've never read any of the Larsson novels or seen the Swedish films, so I'll be coming to the story relatively fresh.
On a slightly different note: I for one love Tarzan, and will never get tired of reading/hearing about him! And the novel Me Cheeta, the fake autobiography by James Lever, was one of the best books I've read in the past few years - it's marvellous!
@John T Today I'm with you.
Davis/Williams/Swinton/Streep/Close quintet
But I still think about Theron or Mara (or maybe Olsen...) could be taking Close’s spot.
Iggy is completely right. I haven't read the books or seen the Swedish film so I'm looking forward to seeing this film. But the main audience for this, I think, got their fill with the Swedish film. Yes, it wasn't a blockbuster by any means but it's easy availability on Netflix and people's penchant to dl movies illegally made it so much harder for Fincher's film to capture those hardcore fans of the series. Anecdotally, I know 4 friends who have read the books. Three of them have seen the Swedish film. The other one hated the book. :)
So instead he's getting me... a person seeing the film to see just Fincher and Mara and don't really have any feelings about the series yet. Unfortunately that's probably not what the studios wanted when green-lighting the film.
Gabriel-see, I feel that Swinton's the vulnerable one if there is one of the five-Close hasn't been to the circus in 23 years-there's a lot of actors who desperately wish they could be in her shoes in the Academy, and there's still a lot of press out there about how she's never won. Granted, that press will still be there after the ceremony in February (no way she's winning, at least in Best Actress), but I think it will be enough for her to return.
Sadly, Cheetah never made the transition to talkies.
Yeah, Iggy's argument makes sense to me. I saw Dragon Tattoo yesterday, and I actually fell asleep. I was disappointed in myself first, then the movie, and then I realized that because I had read the first two books and seen the first two Swedish movies, there was really nothing to watch for in this one. I found myself watching for the consistency of the accents. And that's a sure sign that a movie is not sinking in. I remain a David Fincher fan, but I'm already ready for whatever comes next.
@Liz N.
I think it's partly because of what you say, but also because your "persona" in front of other looks better. Try to say in public "I don't like Doris Lessing." and see the reaction, and then try to say "Doris Lessing is overrated." The first one will probably classify you as an asshole, or at least as someone with an opinion just like everyone else. The second one will make you look opinionated (cooler?), or at least as someone you'd ask to elaborate his/her thoughts.
But I agree with you, there's this fear to feel exposed if you clarify it's just your opinion when in the end, in many cases we just want to express our natural disappointment with something/someone we've over-read about, or has been over-exposed, usually by our own choice. If we discover Beginners by ourselves, by accident, not knowing anything about it our reaction will be different to the one we have after reading about it. Providing there's someone who doesn't find Beginners adorable.
iggy--Excellent points. And I wanted to clarify that, of course, there's nothing wrong with not liking Beginners, The Artist, or any other movie. I should have stated that outright in my original post. Like you said, it's just the "cooler than thou" connotation of "overrated" that's a little distasteful.
Reading the end of that one things to look forward to in 2012 article, in which they talk about a big Leonardo DiCaprio Christmas (because of Great Gatsby and Django) - I began to wonder why he only makes these BIG films. I mean, the actor I consider closest to him in terms of style is Ryan Gosling - who has made such a big name for himself, and proven his range, in much smaller movies. I feel like there's this 'Leonardo DiCaprio is such an amazing actor' thing that has become axiomatic - like, do you think DiCaprio could have pulled off Gosling's role in Half Nelson, Blue Valentine, or even Crazy, Stupid, Love? Why do people think DiCaprio is such a great actor? He seems so one note to me....