Podcast: Top Ten Edition

Nathaniel,  Nick, Katey, and Joe discuss their individual top ten lists. (There was a lot to cram in so your host apologizes for some ungraceful edits.)

43 minutes 
We discuss a lot of different titles including but not limited to: The Martian, Creed, Mistress America, Room, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Son of Saul, Spotlight, The Look of Silence and In Jackson Heights.

Related Reading:
• 15 Best of '15 -Nathaniel's Writeup
• Carol Podcast 1 & Carol Podcast 2 ICYMI. it's high on our lists but we don't discuss it much this time due to time constraints

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon. 

Top Ten Discussion

Introducing Jane

In case you've missed it, LA based producer Ross Putman has been tweeting out the funny-if-they-weren't-so-awful introductions for female characters in the scripts he's been receiving. It's a dismal glimpse into the reality of female representation in cinema, featuring a strong emphasis on how attractive the character is and plenty of 'cool girl' types who are attractive but don't know it.  

JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.

— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016

JANE (late 20s) sits hunched over a microscope. She’s attractive, but too much of a professional to care about her appearance.

— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016

A gorgeous woman, JANE, 23, is a little tipsy, dancing naked on her big bed, as adorable as she is sexy. *BONUS PTS FOR BEING THE 1ST LINE

— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016

Whilst these scripts are likely never seeing the light of day (fingers crossed), it's an unavoidable truth that for every Therese Belevit there are ten Michael Bay Hot Girl who runs 2 metres behind the gawky hero.

To compare, let's look after the jump  at how some of this year's iconic female characters have been introduced in their films after the jump...

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Oscar Screenplays Quotability Index

Manuel here. In a lot of people’s minds, a great screenplay requires at least one quotable line. Look no further than the poster for the 2006 awards which celebrated great lines from Academy Award winning films. Lines like "Rosebud", "Show me the money!" and "I coulda been a contender" — or more recently, "You know what's cooler than a million dollars?" and "Argofuckyourself" — immediately remind you of the film's in question, functioning as helpful shorthand. A good line is sometimes all you need. And so, since we know TFE readers love themselves a list, we had to rank the 10 films nominated for screenplay categories in order of quotability:

10. Ex Machina
Is there such a thing as "visually" quotable? Because that's certainly the case here.

9. Bridge of Spies 
The one truly iconic catchphrase in these screenplays but otherwise, not much else, no?

8. Brooklyn
News of that TV spinoff means more vintage banter!

7. Spotlight and more after the jump...

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Screenplay Categories: Gender by the Numbers

Manuel here. Much of the conversation following the nominations has deservedly been about the way this year’s nominees function in many ways as a litmus test for the larger pitfalls of the Academy and the industry at large. Take the screenplay categories. As Phyllis Nagy urged us, we should be celebrating the fact that four female screenwriters were nominated for four different films. It sounds like a cause worth celebrating until you realize a total of twenty screenwriters were cited overall. You have to admit, those are appalling (if yes, unsurprising) numbers. Actually, in the past ten years, only 17 out of 156 nominated screenwriters have been women. Three quick stats about this year's categories and how they may show we might be turning a corner.

01 The last time we had two female nominees in the Best Original Screenplay category was in 2011 when Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo earned a nomination for their Bridesmaids script. If you remember that was the first time a female duo had been nominated since Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen were cited for Silkwood back in 1983. 

02 The last time two female nominees came from different films?  2007 when The Savages’s Tamara Jenkins and Lars and the Real Girl’s Nancy Oliver joined eventual winnerDiablo Cody (Juno). That was, coincidentally, the last time a female writer was on stage for a screenplay win. 

03 On the Adapted Screenplay side, we have two female screenwriters coming from two different films (Room and Carol). That’s the first time its happened since 2003 when Shari Springer Berman (co-writer of American Splendor) joined eventual winner Fran Walsh (co-writer of Return of the King) in the nominee roster. And yes, you have to go back to 1995 to find a sole female screenwriter taking the gold (Emma Thompson for Sense and Sensibility), a year that also nominated Anna Pavignano for co-writing Il Postino.

Obviously, by the rule of statistical analysis -- which is foolproof and understands that subjective awards must follow mathematical calculations-- this means we're going to get a female writer up on stage this year, right?

Bets on whether Donoghue (Room), Nagy (Carol), Berloff (Straight Outta Compton) or LeFauve (Inside Out) will get to give a speech on February 28th?

Best of 2015: Nathaniel's Top Fifteen

When you devote your life to the movies, you come to cherish the movies that give back as if they're devoted, in return, to you. Yes, you, specifically. Our consumption of movies may be communal but in some ineffable way, especially when it comes to list-making, they're deeply personal; movies in conversation with your soul. At least if you're doing it right. It's painful enough to "rank" a top 15 for 2015. So I included a second tier of favorites. The 30 best of the year, according to your host, took place all over the world as we know it (Germany keeps popping up as does seemingly every place with an arid climate in an odd but starkly beautiful coincidence) to weirdly recognizable places beyond it (Why, Jakku, you look so much like Tattoine!). The unifying thread might be that however alien their perspectives and locales (inside a young girl's brain, locked in a 10 x 10 shed, or chained to the back of rusted death machines in hallucinatory sandstorms), they resonated as if deeply familiar.

Nathaniel's top 30 films of

If you're looking for __ you won't find it:
I liked Magic Mike XXL -- you may recall that Magic Mike (2012) won the Film Bitch Bronze medal here in 2012 as third best of its entire year -- but can't join the unexpected bandwagon of critics who decided they loved the sequel well after it left theaters. I did enjoy it a lot, though. Also just missing the list, not from an absence of affection exactly but "best?" attributes, is Ridley Scott's disco-lite outer-space romp The Martian. I'm far less keen on recent Oscar nominees like The Big Short, Straight Outta Compton, The Hateful Eight, Anomalisa, Trumbo, Son of Saul, and The Revenant but they need not cry from my qualms, indifference, or distaste (depending on the picture) since they have stadiums full of cheering sections elsewhere

And this list is about positive, nay giddy, love. So on to the best of the best. 

15 (Very) Honorable Mentions in Alpha Order
Please seek out: The Troubles via Yann Demange's electric debut '71; Desiree Arkhavan's hilarious bisexual Iranian-American hipster romcom (a genre we didn't even know we needed but love) Appropriate Behavior; Spielberg & Hanks's absorbing Bridge of Spies; Disney's girlie lush live-action Cinderella spin; Olivier Assayas's actressy-angst at those Clouds of Sils Maria; Celine Sciamma's infectiously observed but profoundly sad Girlhood; Lily Tomlin & Paul Weitz's Grandma focused road trip; the waking nightmare game of sexual tag in It Follows; Iceland's formally compelling beast and man oddity Of Horses and Men; Brazil's smart socioeconomic collisions in The Second Mother; Paul Feig & Melissa McCarthy's Spy romp; Disney's easy money $4 billion bet The Force Awakens; Tom McCarthy's soulful journalism procedural Spotlight; Aaron Sorkin's presentational Steve Jobs triptych; Xavier Dolan's queasy, queer, razor blade dangerous Tom at the Farm; and the director, crew, and cast who pulled off that continuous shot jaw-dropper stunt that was Victoria... and pulled it off with feeling. 

Without further ado and with deep appreciation...

NATHANIEL'S TOP 15 OF '15
🎶 they're speaking my language baby 🎶 

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
(Brett Haley)
Bleecker Street Media. May 15th
92 minutes 

A movie as unassuming as Blythe Danner's still waters star turn, and as gently surprised by its twilight romanticism as the wonderful theme song. It's easy to imagine this film becoming a staple, a comfortable blanket to wrap yourself up in on lonely nights; an old dear friend that understands the value of finding new ones.

You're a good drinking buddy!"

CHI-RAQ
(Spike Lee)
Roadside Attractions. December 4th
119 minutes 

By no small margin the most uneven and sometimes downright sloppy movie on this 15 wide "Best" list --  stop reading the teleprompter Samuel L Jackson, learn your damn verse! But, a permanent truth: perfection isn't everything. Vitality of voice, with something actually worth saying, counts for quite a lot with so many polished but empty-headed and safe pictures clogging up each year's awards pipeline. Spike Lee won an Honorary Oscar shortly before anyone saw his reworking of Lysistrata, transported to contemporary Chicago (nicknamed Chi-Raq for its crime rate troubles). Nobody knew that his best movie in 15 years was about to hit to make that statue feel retroactively less of a tribute to past highs (Do The Right Thing, 25th Hour, etcetera) and more of an "it's about damn time!" honor for a still relevant artist. Chi-Raq is... Crazy. Funny. Sexy. Anguished. Silly. Mad. Experimental. Sickening. Sober. Even Optimistic. In short, "It's 'EVERYTHING!' as the queens say. Now if only everyone would go see this bold bawdy and beautiful everything. And, did someone say "Queen," I can hear Miss Helen (Angela Bassett, who also Got Her Groove Back of late) shaking her head at the meager box office receipts.

Y'all make my tired ass tired!" 

SICARIO
(Denis Villeneuve)
Lionsgate. October 2nd
121 minutes 

If Denis Villenueve's movies get any more tense they're going to explode by the second reel.

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