Tues Top Ten: The Year in Dance Scenes

Michael C. here. Over at Serious Film I've been handing out awards for 2012, but when I tried to name the dance scene of the year I realized 2012 was too packed with great contenders to choose only a single champion. So here is a more comprehensive list of the best scenes where characters couldn't fight their dancing feet.

Honorable Mentions

I consider Holy Motor's accordion scene more parade than dance otherwise it would surely top this list. Likewise I don't know quite how to classify Philip Seymour Hoffman's disturbing performance during The Master's nude party fantasy although it certainly impossible to forget. As for Magic Mike all the movie's dance scenes blended together in my memory, so maybe some Ladies of Tampa can enlighten me in the comments as to which one was the standout. 

 Top 10 Dance Scenes of 2012 

10. Take This Waltz 
I wasn’t as in love with this infidelity drama as many were, but it had a handful of great scenes where I could see what everybody else was so excited about. The finest was a house party where the secret life of Michelle Williams’ character threatens to spill out into public view on the dance floor to the tune of Feist’s terrific cover of Leonard Cohen’s Closing Time. 

9. Silver Linings Playbook (and 8 more films after the jump)

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NYFF: "Frances Ha" Dazzling Brooklyn Snapshot

Michael C. here to report on the first home run I've seen at the New York Film Festival. Frances Ha is the type movie experience I’m hoping for every time I plunk down my ticket money. It knows exactly what it wants to do and how it wants to do it and as a result it grabs you by the sleeve and pulls you right in. It is Noah Baumbach’s finest film to date and the big breakout due for Greta Gerwig for some time now. 

Frances (Gerwig) is a dancer who shares a Brooklyn apartment with her bestest buddy Sophie (Mickey Sumner). Pushing thirty and stalled professionally and personally, she is right at the age when spending her nights flitting around the city getting wasted with her girlfriend stops being cute and starts being a cause for concern. When events transpire to threaten Frances' holding pattern the wheels quickly come off her cushy existence.

With this film Baumbach has not expanded his style so much as smashed it into a thousand pieces and arranged them into a collage. [More...]

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TIFF: Charmed by Ewan McGregor and "Frances Ha"

Toronto International Film Festival reports. Amir is already on the scene...

Amir here. The first couple of days at the festival have been so fantastic, surreal even, that I fear there’s no way to go from here but down. There’s been quite a lot of star gazing: Ryan Gosling, Snoop Dogg Lion, Selena Gomez, Abbie Cornish and the impossibly gorgeous Greta Gerwig. I also happened to run into the super lovely Ben Whishaw and most significant of all, had a one on one interview with William H. Macy for The Sessions. It was an amazing experience as Macy’s long been one of my favourite actors and to get to meet him in person was more than I could ask for. (The interview is forthcoming.)

The most unexpected of my encounters with the celebrities, however, happened at the screening of Noah Baumbach’s exquisite Frances Ha. Those of you following me on twitter have already seen my picture with the man in question but the story went as such: prior to the film, my friends and I were discussing which celebrities we most wanted to see and my pick was Ewan McGregor, who’s in town for the premiere of The Impossible; he's probably my favourite actor working today. Then, as we settle in our seats in the theatre, I look to a few rows ahead and lo and behold, McGregor – who is in no way involved with the film and is only there to see it – is sitting there, just chatting with a friend.

And then this happened...

me and McGregor!

Having worked behind the scenes at TIFF for so many years, I’ve seen a good share of celebrities but this was something truly special.

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Halfway House 2012. Lead Actress (Thus Far)

Don't you love to take stock every six months? At the very least it's a good excuse for list-making. Lists! Wheeee. If all Academy members did this before they sent in their nominee ballots in January, we might end up with a spread of nominees that wasn't so December slanted. I never decide who to vote for this early but I do draw up lists of performances I enjoyed /  respected to consider again later in the year when all the advertising rushes in an effort to shape the highly malleable collective subconscious and thus, votes.

If I had to draw up a ballot right now:

• Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  The movie is considerably less broad once it's reigned in by her warmth, laughter, and subtlety
• Valerie Donzelli, Declaration of War (France's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  She still has raw wound access to what must have been a highly traumatic experience (she and her ex-boyfriend play fictionalized versions of themselves trying to save their nearly fatally ill child) but the turn has a wide range of feeling and levity via mischievous romantic impulses and gallows humor.
• Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
  How soon till she's back at the Oscars? Maybe not for this... directly. 
• Stephanie Sigman, Miss Bala (Mexico's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  Wonderfully naturalistic. She just vibrates with impotent terror. 
• Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild 
  A force of nature even while nature is whipping up mythological force all around in "the bathtub" 

Oscar thoughts and other fine performances after the jump...

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"To Red Carpets With Love" - Gerwig, Pill, Cruz.

It's the new improved Red Carpet Convos. Faster, snappier, more focused... at least until the Oscars when it's impossible not to feel overwhelmed by gowns and veritably trampled by stilettos. For now, one event or theme at a time, all quick like. Today it's premiere time for Woody Allen. Welcome back Joanna from Pajiba.

Joanna: Okay, let's hit it!

Nathaniel: ‪Today we're going To Rome With Love by way of Los Angeles and New York.‬ 

Woody Allen, Allison Pill, Elena Anaya, Penélope Cruz, Greta Gerwig

Joanna:  ‪Bad fashion from 'round the world!‬

Nathaniel:  ‪Right. I hate to start with such a downer waaah-waaaaah but I almost feel like this LA premiere is actual stills from a Woody Allen movie. He kinda loves the beiges.‬ Since red carpets take place outdoors we'll call this Exteriors. Coming Soon!

Joanna:  ‪Not Alison's Getting Married?‬ 

Nathaniel:  ‪Marriage, Pill Style [pill being valiums]‬ 

Joanna:  ‪I love Pill and I think she looks swellegant from the waist up.  But the length is so bridal meets plastic shower curtain from Target.

Nathaniel:  ‪With ballet slippers? ‬I mean where is she going. 

Joanna:  ‪If this were a wedding, then Penélope Cruz would be the super aggressive Mother of The Bride.‬

Nathaniel:  ‪Right. Love the Power Bitch Shellacked Hair though it always reminds me of that time when Laura Linney got all "bad girl" at the Oscars.‬

 Joanna:  ‪Not loving the sparkly boob drape, but it's almost as if Penélope is narrowing her heavily lined eyes at me, daring me to question her "window treatment."  If you know what I mean.‬

Nathaniel:  ‪This red carpet is depressing and it's for a sunny Rome-set comedy. Greta Gerwig will play the role of Pill's Flower (Dress) Girl. Or wait. are those grapes?‬

Joanna:  ‪Rome? Grapes? A theme!‬ 

Nathaniel:  ‪To Bacchus With Love‬ 

 Joanna:  ‪I have to say, of all the pieces on this carpet, Elena Anaya's hot pink shoes are my FAVORITE.‬

Nathaniel:  ‪The Shoes She Lives In

Joanna: god I loved that movie.

Nathaniel: ‬Let's change cities like Woody do. (He should direct a James Bond movie since they're always globe hopping) 

Alvy Singer, Gerwig, The Real Mr & Mrs Don Draper, Cruz

Joanna:  ‪What is the delightful secret Woody is keeping? ‬Is it that Greta is expecting? Or that her shoes are secretly the Phantom Of The Opera? 

Nathaniel:  Hee. But that's why we were at a wedding earlier. Shotgun.‬ Woody, Greta, and Penélope are in NYC all of a sudden in this photo so out comes the black (shoes or dress or both)

Joanna:  ‪But Penelope is sticking to the grape theme.‬ 

Nathaniel:  ‪Days of Wine and Bardem-Cruzes -- I can't stop with the fake movie titles. Apologies.

poll by twiigs.com

I'd love to get complely drunk with her but I kinda hate this color on her. I'm not sure why. I think maybe it's because she looks so tan lately.‬

Joanna:  ‪What do we think of the Hamm Wesfeldt's? I love her dress and basically everything about her except for her Zellwegerian squint. And he, to me, is stubbly perfection.‬

Nathaniel:  ‪I love them. They strike me as a genuinely awesome happy couple, whether squinting or unshaven. And, not for nothing, I think they'd both be great in a Woody Allen movie. I hope they were handshaking and charming and bantering to sell that.‬

Joanna:  ‪<--- OH GOD GRETA'S WAIST FRINGE‬ 

Nathaniel:  ‪I knew I had to hit you with another Greta pic. It's just... what?!?

Joanna:  ‪Her waist looks like it's wearing false eyelashes.‬ The whole thing is just so staggeringly unflattering.  In every conceivable way. 

Nathaniel:  ‪waistlashes. lol. what an image.‬ I'm not sure how to end this Exteriors movie. ‬Gerwig has robbed me of speech.

Joanna:  ‪Then take a tip from Woody and, just, shhhhhhhhhhhh.‬ 

Nathaniel:  ‪[rolling credits with some jaunty 30s tune]‬ 

Previously on Red Carpet Convos...
Cannes dresses (Jose)
Rock of Ages and Prometheus premieres (Joanna & Nathaniel)
Hunger Games premiere (Guy & Nathaniel)