The Whole Damn Thing Awards - 2014, Part I

Welcome to the first ever Whole Damn Thing Awards where the Cinecdoche Academy of Motion Fiction Arts and Sciences award those movies we think deserved it. The rules are fairly simple: eligibility, the number of nominees and pretty much everything else is left to the discretion of the Academy. The Academy will, however, attempt to steer clear of categories it has absolutely no idea about (which includes the three short film categories and the distinctions between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing and Original and Adapted Screenplay). Let’s get the proceedings underway.

First, for Achievement in Hair and Make-Up the nominees are:

Inherent Vice, for creating a distillation of imagined ‘70s Los Angeles and its attendant cultures with precision and wit

The Grand Budapest Hotel, for creating a fictional world with an astonishing degree of character and specificity

Foxcatcher, for giving essential shape and direction to the three central performances

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I, for creating a viral sensation in the creation of Natalie Dormer’s hairstyle

Under the Skin, for sculpting the form of its lead actress to best exemplify its themes

And the Whole Damn Thing goes to….

Under the Skin!

For Achievement in Visual Effects the nominees are

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, for taking the art of motion capture to newer and more impressive heights

Under the Skin, for creating spaces unknown to the human eye with astonishing fidelity

Goodbye to Language 3D, for its inspired manipulation of the cinematic frame and everything that fits in it

The Grand Budapest Hotel, for using wit and charm that reflects its thematic ideals

…and the winner is…

Goodbye to Language 3D!

We now turn to a lighter category, one that is possibly very incorrect about its nominees - Best Original Song. The nominees in this category are

“Everything is Awesome” by Tegan and Sara ft. The Lonely Island in The Lego Movie, for being the most cheerful earworm to emerge this year from the movies

“Glory” by John Legend and Common from Selma, for crafting a powerful anthem of hope and activism

"Unknown Song" from Timbuktu, for creating a sonic landscape that offers human resistance to religious totalitarianism

"Unknown Song" from A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, for a howl that embraces the abyss

…and the winner is…

"Unknown Song" from Timbuktu!

While we linger on music, let us move on to the award for Best Original Score. Our nominees are:

Alexandre Desplat for The Grand Budapest Hotel, for creating a score that embraces whimsy and charm while never losing sight of its melancholy

Micah Levi for Under the Skin, for building a bewildering, tense and unnerving sense of dread throughout

Antonio Sanchez for Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), for a pulsing, propulsive beat that careens us from scene to scene

Joe Hisaishi for The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, for navigating the disparate emotions of an old folk tale with resonance and honesty

…and the winner is…

Alexandre Desplat for The Grand Budapest Hotel! While the other nominees certainly created memorable, haunting works Desplat’s score moves through a cavalcade of emotions with sprightly elegance while never seeming to break a sweat. Just delightful.

Our next award is for Achievement in Production Design. The nominees are:

The Strange Little Cat, for decorating an apartment with all the messy ephemera of real life

The Grand Budapest Hotel, for creating an entire world that is as much Looney Tunes as it is Lubitsch

The Babadook, for the best children’s book ever

The Lego Movie, for being loud, brash and proud

The Missing Picture, for the depth of emotion it plumbs using handmade still lives

…and the winner is…

The Missing Picture!

Now we move on to the award for Achievement in Costume Design. The nominees are:

Inherent Vice, for recreating the textures of color and ugliness that are ‘70s fashions

Jauja, for making period costumes look rich, colorful and profoundly uncomfortable

Under the Skin, for creating one iconic costume image

Guardians of the Galaxy, for creating a wide variety of looks to inhabit the universe

The Grand Budapest Hotel, for the delightful cheekiness of its precision in creating characters

…and the winner is…

The Grand Budapest Hotel!

Next we come to the special feature categories. To start, Best Animated Feature. The nominees are:

The Lego Movie, for an avalanche of jokes that culminate in an emotionally satisfying finale

The Wind Rises, for embracing the ambiguity of artistic expression in complex political climates

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, for creating a fable that remains true to its history and culture but loses none of its resonance

…and the winner is…

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya!

Our next category is Best Documentary Feature. The nominees are:

The Missing Picture, for telling a story that deserves to be heard

What Now? Remind Me, for inviting us to live as close to a person as is possible in the cinematic medium

Citizenfour, for elevating its essential political discourse with eerie and terrifying images

Manakamana, for giving us the time and space to think about all that is important

Private Violence, for humanizing a political issue with a gut punch

…and the winner is…

Manakamana!

The final special mention award of the night, Best Non-English Feature. The nominees are:

Goodbye to Language 3D, for inventing new ways of looking at cinema and being obnoxious and grouchy about it

Jauja, for creating a fairy tale world filled with humor, beauty and surprise

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, for telling a story as universal as it is specific and strange

The Strange Little Cat, for evoking the truest sensation of what it feels like to live in an apartment

The Midnight After, for couching its commentary on Hong Kong society in the wondrous and the weird

…and the winner is…

Jauja!

The Academy has just announced the remaining The Whole Damn Thing award winners! Find out who takes Best Director, Actress, Picture and more here!

My Year in Movies, Part III

After a long month of lollygagging, here's some more great movies I saw in 2014:

                                                                        The Craft

A newly formed coven of witches decide to use their witchly powers for dastardly witchly deeds. This is a whole lot of fun, especially Fairuza Balk as the demented harpy leading the central quartet. I really hope that someone gets her cast in a solid comeback role soon.

Knightriders

The usual reason George Romero films succeed is because they’re smart. Not intelligent necessarily, but smart. They know what they have to do and they do it very well. Not so Knightriders which is a sprawling, ambitious, strange gem in the wilderness. Anchored by a wondrous performance by Ed Harris the movie tiptoes the line between idealistic Arthurian legend and quotidian motorderby earthiness. Nobody talks about this one but they really, really should.

Captain Blood

Errol Flynn was one charming motherfucker and while The Adventures of Robin Hood is the better movie, this is the better Flynn. It’s got a musculature missing from the more polished movie – a pleasant rawness that sells both the action and the sexuality. Also, pirates!

The Black Pirate

More pirates! This time with the inimitable Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Black Sunday

I love Bava. I really do. Blood and Black Lace is one of the most gorgeous horror movies ever brought to the screen. But one rarely turns to Bava for story or character or any of that nonsense. Well, not unless he’s got Barbara Steele to do the heavy lifting. And as much as I will fawn on Bava for the deep, musty, ecstatically Gothic look of the film, let’s also take some time to celebrate one of the greatest horror actors of all time. Just look at that face!

Blue

Naked Lunch

David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch is probably not for everyone. It’s stiff and mannered and odd for the sake of oddness. It is the most “literary” of literary adaptations. But God do I adore this weird amalgamation of the book, Cronenberg and the life of William S. Burroughs. It’s a bizarre mutant creature that would not survive in the sun but it croons lovingly to the moon at night.

                                                                         Visitor Q

Takashi Miike’s brain is composed of equal parts genius and heinous depravity. In Visitor Q it tilts dangerously close to the latter. It’s Teorema on coke. Lots of coke. A vile, sadistic, enrapturing masterpiece. A discovery, undoubtedly, but not for the faint of heart.

Malcolm X

Can we all agree that this is the greatest biopic of all time? While other biopics latch on to the events of a person’s life, Malcolm X focuses on the person himself and manages to create one of the most believable portraits of a human being ever captured on film. Denzel Washington is phenomenal and Spike Lee has rarely been better and I consider that a very big compliment.

Viola

It’s a 65 minute movie and I don’t get the second half at all. But that first half made me as giddy and hopped up on romance and theater and their various sinuous entanglements as anything I’ve ever seen.

Next time on CINEC-DOW-KEY: Birdman, Mike Leigh biopic, Sex on the Beach and much more! 

My Year in Movies, Part II

In which I use too many hyperbolic adjectives to describe some more movies I liked watching this year.

Johnny Guitar

You all know how weird this movie is, right? Because it’s the cinematic equivalent of walking down a flight of stairs and missing a dozen steps. It’s a Western where the main source of conflict is the sexual jealousy one woman feels for another. Sure, Sterling Hayden is the fastest gun west of the something or other but he spends the entire movie pining after Joan Crawford who has much more important things on her mind, like wearing pants and being a self-made woman. It’s all too exciting for words and features loud garish colours that just make my heart melt.

Drunken Angel

Kurosawa isn’t a cerebral filmmaker. He’s a visceral one. His stories aren’t meant to be pondered, they’re meant to be felt. Like a blow to the gut. Drunken Angel is a perfect example of the kind of full-throated emotion he was so good at. It’s simple. Sometimes barbarically so. But that is all to the benefit of its raw, angry humanism.

To Be or Not to Be

Has there ever been a more elegant filmmaker than Ernst Lubitsch? Maybe not. And it rarely gets better than this fantastic comedy about a group of Shakespearean performers trying to swindle the Nazis. It’s witty, seductive and hates Nazis. Because honestly, fuck the Nazis.

White Dog

Few people could elevate exploitation to great art with as much intelligence, energy and intensity as Sam Fuller. And White Dog is a vicious piece of exploitation given angry, throbbing life. A young woman finds a stray dog that attacks black people on sight and tries to rehabilitate it with the help of a black animal trainer. It’s cruel, trashy stuff. But Fuller doesn’t sand off the edges, he hones them. White Dog’s allegory is brutal, nasty and sharp – a merciless flagellation of American racism.

Bambi

It’s The Lion King but better.

The Lady Eve

Barbara Stanwyck is a money grubbing con artist, Henry Fonda is the dopey heir to a whole lot of beer money and you can make up the rest of it as you go along. But even the studio system at its finest could only churn out one of these babies - a well oiled fizz machine of charm, romance and lascivity. And if you have a thing for Barbara Stanwyck or ears, well… you’re going to have a fun time.

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

From the prime romcoms of yesteryear we come to the really good romcoms of more modern yesteryear. And let’s face it, context has a lot to do with how much I liked this one. Quality romantic comedies aren’t exactly a dime a dozen nowadays. But Johnnie To is as solidly reliable as they come and he delivers with a charmer I like to describe as Manic Pixie Dream World. Cute girl has chemistry with two cute guys and has to end up with one or the other (why not both?) It’s a load of pish but it’s a delightfully entertaining one. And that’s all that matters.

Shivers

Calling this early Cronenberg feature unpolished feels close to lying outright. It’s a rough mess of stiff acting and low-budget making do. But even through that haze Shivers comes through fiercely intelligent and disturbing work of modern horror. The setup is basic: a virus runs rampant through an apartment complex stirring its hosts to defilement, depravity and murder. If the opening scene, a TV ad for the complex, doesn’t get you the last half hour of grotesque, nightmarish imagery will.     

Schizopolis

Sometimes, when nearing the end of one’s creative rope, artists need to just let out steam. And sometimes they do so by fucking right off and putting every half-formed idea that floats through their head into one silly, stupid piece of work. But because some people are Steven Soderbergh their dumb brain puke ends up being one of the most exciting, ridiculous, revitalizing and ecstatic bits of modern American cinema. Schizopolis!

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary

It’s a Gothic ballet done in the style of a 1920s silent horror movie. If that doesn’t lead to goosebumps in the deep, dark recesses of your soul, I don’t think you'll ever truly get me.

Next time on Cinecdoche: Pirates! Geisha! The sharp soullessness of German society!

My Year in Movies, Part I

Every year filmy peoples from all over the world get to do their top ten movies of the year. Sadly, I’m an inveterate slacker and can't work up the energy to go see a movie. So I don't have a list of my favorite movies from 2014. I don’t think I’ve even seen ten 2014 releases yet. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching something. So here’s the first part of my list of favorite movies I saw for the first time this year.

Dead Man

Jim Jarmusch is the quintessential face of the American art house cinema: cosmopolitan, cool, ironically detached, multifarious, a white dude who loves non-white dude stuff. But only he could have made Dead Man, a hypnotic death dream that’s equal parts acid trip and revisionist Western. If nothing else it’s worth it just to hear Chris Farmer say “stupid fucking white man”. 

Stranger by the Lake

Sure, the other LGBT movie came out of Cannes with a Palm D’Or but for my money this twisty little noodle was far better. A wonderful concoction that takes the easy sunkissed settings of Eric Rohmer and mixes it with the sly undulations of a slasher movie’s sexdeath obsession. Also, fun looking (if occasionally nerve-wracking) gay sex for once!

Wake in Fright

The Outback has got to be the scariest desert ever. The Sahara has its deceptive bulks of sand and the Gobi looks a flat and dreary tundra, but God if the Outback doesn’t seem like a sun scorched death blasted hell slab. So who in the world wants to live there? Meet the cheery folks of the Yabba who drink, gamble, screw and hunt with animalistic abandon. And they might still be better than namby pamby assholes with something to prove about their masculinity.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

You know who makes really good movies that seem like they’re for kids but are actually for adults? The Czechs. I know, right? Who would’ve guessed. But between this and Jan Svankmajer’s Alice I’ve got to say that they really have the “fragile but beautiful, creepy and somewhat sexual fairy tale fantasy” stuff locked down. It’s a gorgeous movie with the best kind of surrealist dream logic and I would love it if for nothing but the astonishing set design.

American Mary

I’m not sure this movie has the best grasp on what it’s trying to say but damn if it doesn’t have a wonderfully good time saying it. After a terrible tragedy aspiring surgeon Mary Mason decides to use her skills to help the underground body modification community. But will she be pushed a little too far until bodies get modded without prior consent? Of course! Why would you be watching this otherwise?

Rushmore

The best superhero movie since the original Superman. Full review here (heavy spoilers).

White Material

I don’t get Claire Denis’s movies. They are strange and elliptical and they float from idea to idea and scene to scene like a free association poem. But boy do I love them. This one especially. It’s almost a collage of concepts – strong willed white woman, colonialism in Africa, power dynamics in post-colonial states, the ownership of black and white bodies, loyalty, cruelty, pain. But it has an incredible rush to it - a complex coursing heart that pulls together all the disparate artsy elements into a visceral gut-punch of an experience. Just magnificent.

The Revenge of Frankenstein

I am incredibly proud to present Messrs. Sangster and Fisher, the greatest writer-director team in horror cinema. The Hammer Horror hellraisers managed to revitalize the genre with a magnificent shot in the arm of intelligent and well-acted Gothic horror. With Peter Cushing as the magnificently douche-y Herr Frankenstein, the crew managed to pop out a number of canonical entries. My favorite, however, might be this one which finds the good doctor in an unusually likable mood. Sure, he’s still slicing up bodies and playing a cerebral game of musical chairs, but this time it’s in the service of his deformed assistant getting to live life in a beautiful new body. It’s unusually moving stuff and it works like gangbusters. And I will never, ever forget the delicate prissiness with which Peter Cushing handles a rose.

Ravenous

To those of you who don’t like this cannibal comedy thriller which starts by flipping off Nietzsche, that’s too bad. But for the rest of us (there are dozens!) this is one of those cult classics that make you consider how well a dark hooded robe would go with your ensemble and whether you can make room for unspeakable sacrificial rites after Sunday brunch. Believe.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I really want to see the play but I'll make do with Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

On the next exciting episode of Cinecdoche: More movies I liked and stuff!