(My) Best of 09: Picture.

10. Where the Wild Things Are (read my review)

You can be the biggest cynic on earth and you will still let out a big "aww" the second Karen O's enchanting score appears accompanying the studio logos which Max (Max Records) has scratched and made his own.
When seconds later we meet the hyperactive child we can't help but fall in love with his ambition to make the world his own. As he travels to the island of monsters unaware of the creatures he will meet we're reminded of times in our childhood when nothing made us afraid and life was an adventure waiting to be conquered.
How Spike Jonze made a film that penetrates the armor of childhood while examining the bittersweetness we carry on to adulthood is a wonder upon itself.
An exercise in nostalgia that still manages to refresh our days in unimaginable ways.


9. Police, Adjective (read my review)

Like Steve McQueen's "Hunger", this Romanian film might become known for a bold setpiece that has the camera fixed while three characters talk inside an office.
Police officers Cristi (Dragos Bucur) and Nelu (Ion Stoica) sit in opposing chairs while Captain Anghelache (Vlad Ivanov) questions them about the ongoing case they've been working on.
Up to that point in the film Anghelache has only been a ghost who Cristi tries to avoid and when we meet him we understand why.
With a single sentence Anghelache shatters Cristi's idealistic methods and questions Nelu's stoicism, then in the film's most controversial moment dedicates more than ten minutes to a dictionary entry!
But then and there director Corneliu Porumboiu establishes that his film is not the pretentious nod at academia it often seems to be but a dark comedy that mocks the power language has obtained in our societies.
Its examining of the absurd however has utterly terrifying repercussions.


8. Antichrist (read my review)

Despite Lars von Trier's efforts to make "Antichrist" something everybody would squirm, cry and complain about, the film might very well be the most moving and personal work he has done to date.
Those willing to see beyond the mutilation, bloodied genitals, talking foxes, poetic deaths and medieval allegories will find themselves peeking at the psyche of a man who likes to call himself the greatest director in the world but is filled with as many doubts, insecurities and problems as the rest of us.
The obvious facade of "Antichrist" perhaps is saying that he might be all bark and no bite, but take the time to peel its layers and you will see a courageous attempt at dialogue with the divine.


7. Bright Star (read my review)

Watch how Jane Campion turns this...

"I almost wish we were butterflies
and lived but three summer days
three such days with you
I could fill with more delight
than fifty common years
could ever contain"

...into cinema.


6. The Hurt Locker (read my review)

Before it became an awards juggernaut and the center of ridiculous claims, "The Hurt Locker", like some of the best films of 2009, was a small picture that reminded us of the power that lies in genre.
Action flick expert Kathryn Bigelow refreshed our notions of the war action film as something that can be profound without losing its thrills.
In the process proving Michael Bay, Clint Eastwood, chauvinism and war mongers were all wrong.


5. Broken Embraces (read my review)

Who knew Michelangelo Antonioni's infamous tennis ball could take on the shape of Penélope Cruz? Apparently Pedro Almodóvar did and in "Broken Embraces" he uses his muse to break our hearts and open our mind's eyes to the notions of what's real and what's not.
Unlike the cold Antonioni, Pedro proves that intellectual stimulation can also be warm and affective as he frames his theories in a melodramatic plot that recalls "Notorious" and "Voyage to Italy".
The film's title is an homage to neorealism but its structure and reach couldn't be more postmodernist if they tried.


4. Vincere (read my review)

What's the best way to tell a story that deals with rumors about the life of a historical figure? To answer this question Marco Bellocchio looked back at art history and came up with three influential movements that used aesthetics to dig into larger truths.
"Vincere" therefore is a romantic melodrama inspired by silent films, expressionist opera and Eisensten-ian editing.
Bellocchio is able to keep these currents from clashing and succumbing to their own grandiosity, like a masterful conductor using a storm to make music he makes "Vincere" thunderous and big but keeps it from sinking under its own weight.


3. A Prophet (read my review)

Speaking of genre as a way to connect to more profound subjects, Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" may look like a gritty gangster flick at first glance-and it sure works like one-but the underlying themes of racial empowerment, spiritual search and criminal coming-of-age at its center are worthy of discussing with your shrink your social worker and your priest.
But the movie is never as "Officer Krupke" specific as that description, Audiard makes the story of Malik (Tahar Rahim) mean something different to whoever's watching and while some will be inspired to call it the best thing since "The Godfather" others will be more intrigued with figuring out the theological meaning of the title cards Audiard inserts throughout the film.


2. Up (read my review)

An adventure film in the very essence of the word, Pete Docter's "Up" is another winning entry in the Pixar canon that makes the studio the most consistently brilliant factory in Hollywood or a good luck streak waiting to crash.
The creativity in this film makes it seem more like the former though, especially in the way the screenwriters and director make the oddest elements work like magic.
Beyond its obvious homages to classic cinema, Buck Rogers and Indiana Jones, "Up" owes its most precious moments to the machinations of old studio Hollywood where people seemed to sit around a desk, throw things inside a giant pot and come out with a film that had romance, drama, comedy, adventure and even room for various analytical readings.
"Up" is the rare kind of movie that still happens to have it all.


1. The White Ribbon (read my review)

If "The White Ribbon" is the year's coldest film, it-ironically- might also be the most inviting. Long gone are the days when going to the cinema was an interactive experience in which the filmmakers and the audience made the movie together.
We have grown used to sitting in the dark, munching on our pop corn and leaving all the problem solving and idea digesting to the people up on the screen and behind the camera.
Leave it to Michael Haneke to bring this sort of event back with a film that might seem like an over analytical allegory at first but also happens to be the most delicious mystery of the year.
One which we're invited to participate in because it reaches beyond the film.
The strange crimes occurring in the German village are enough to keep our brain working throughout the movie looking for clues and suspects but Haneke makes sure we also have fun on the way back home from the theater and makes us see that despite our universe being in true color, it might just be an extension of the black and white world we've just left.
The burning of that barn we saw might be that mysterious explosive that just blew an Afghan building halfway across the world and the bullying of a young disabled child might explain why certain kids grow into violent adults that solve everything with violence.
"The White Ribbon" might work as a prequel to every movie Michael Haneke has ever made but it also works as warning to the world we've yet to see.

(My) Best of 09: Actor.

5. Filippo Timi in "Vincere" (read my review)

Filippo Timi is so effective as Benito Mussolini, that when the actual historical footage of Il Duce is shown on the movie, you will wonder for a second or two-despite your best knowledge-if this isn't the actor playing him.
Timi may not really look like Mussolini and he plays him during a part of his life from which few records exist but he does so with such an overpowering energy that you don't dare disbelieve his choices. Whether it's Benito's violent love making or his tempestuous mood swifts, Timi owns the man.


4. Ben Whishaw in "Bright Star" (read my review)

As British romantic poet John Keats, Ben Whishaw has the difficult job of transforming an introverted, sickly man into the ultimate sort of romantic hero.
For how can a man write some of the most breathtaking poetry in English literature and not be a dashing lad the kind of which Laurence Olivier would've played?
Whishaw takes the exact opposite road we would've expected and makes Keats almost as subtle as his work. He wraps himself in the excessive romance Keats wrote about and becomes a figure worthy of Thoreau who is at his best surrounded by nature. His face lights up amidst vast flower fields and he becomes one with a tree he climbs.
His scenes with lover Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) contain such delicateness that it's impossible for us not to sigh without falling into the lustful desire we often attribute to muse/artist duos.
Whishaw's sensitive approach makes you believe that Keats was perhaps too beautiful to remain for long in the mortal world.


3. Jeremy Renner in "The Hurt Locker" (read my review)

"The Hurt Locker" is a wonderful thriller that also happens to be an insightful character study and judging from the raw performance of Jeremy Renner we wouldn't have it be otherwise.
His work as Sgt. William James is so powerful that you don't know if to be more scared of the bombs he works with or his very own explosive nature.
As the kind of smartass who lives by his own rules he becomes a charming jerk but it isn't until we see him lost in a supermarket that we finally begin to see him as a human being as lost and scared as anyone else.
How he manages to go through a whole movie rarely showing sensitive emotion to have him all of a sudden pull the rug from under our feet is a remarkable feat.
That he becomes a mystery anew seconds before the film is over is just mindblowing.


2. Joaquin Phoenix in "Two Lovers" (read my review)

The first time we meet Leonard (Phoenix) he jumps into the bay at Brighton Beach to see if he dies. When he doesn't it's curious to detect a sarcastic disappointment in his face, as if he's saying "next time I'll succeed".
He reaches his parents' house where his mom (Isabella Rossellini) looks at him disapprovingly but used to this sort of behavior. Like a ten year old boy Leonard goes straight to his room as if he knew this was the thing to do when he misbehaved.
In a few scenes Joaquin Phoenix gives us the complete history of this man-child who moves through life propelled by inertia until his existence is defined by his love for two women.
Phoenix, who rarely has been so moving, evokes Dean and Brando while coming up with an internal conflict the kind of which most young actors would only dream of.
If his announcement to quit acting after this film is true he delivered the kind of swan song every artist would dream of by teasing us with all the potential he had stored within.


1. Tahar Rahim in "A Prophet" (read my review)

Story goes that director Jacques Audiard met Tahar Rahim almost by accident when they ended up sharing a car on a movie studio. The director saw something so special in the young man that he cast him as the lead of his planned prison saga and in the process a star was born.
Rahim who is as far from being a movie star as Audiard is from being a commercial director, imbues Malik el Djebena with such naturalism that the raw power of his performance truly takes us by surprise.
Even if he's in almost every scene of the film, he tries not to be there, the actor is like a chameleon who we notice only when he wants us to. He gives Malik all these details and nuances that we fall into that awful way of measuring brilliance and ask ourselves how much of him is in the character.

A Prophet ****

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A White Prophet.

It was a wonderful night for two of the year's best films which continued collecting the awards they began garnering in Cannes almost a year ago.

Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" deservedly won the prestigious ASC award for motion picture cinematography beating fellow Oscar nominees "Avatar", Inglourious Basterds" and "The Hurt Locker".
This could bode well for Austrian DP Christian Berger come Oscar day if it weren't for the fact that the Academy rarely chooses the best in the bunch.
Oscar and ASC have matched four times in the past decade and usually the guild has chosen the worthiest nominee (the year Emmanuel Lubezki won for "Children of Men" being the clearest example).
They have also shown their love for black and white in the past giving their top award to Roger Deakins for "The Man Who Wasn't There".
Also, contrary to what "The Hollywood Reporter" is saying this isn't the first time that a foreign language film takes the top award. Just five years ago Bruno Delbonnel won for his exquisite sepia work in "A Very Long Engagement". It also wouldn't mean the ASC has suddenly gone foreign, only one out of the five last winners was American.

Across the Atlantic, Jacques Audiard's brilliant "A Prophet" won nine Cesar awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Niels Arestrup) and in a surprising event both Best Actor and Breakthrough Actor for the amazing Tahar Rahim.
Isabelle Adjani won Best Actress and in one of those strange things only the French understand "Gran Torino" beat "Milk", "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The White Ribbon" to take home Best Foreign Language Film.


Both movies are the the top contenders to win the foreign film Oscar in a week and honestly both are absolutely deserving of all the praise they've gotten.

We're BAFTA-ing! Part 2.

As BAFTA announced the winner of its Rising Star award I was overjoyed at the possibility of seeing Carey Mulligan win a big award but then I remembered this is voted by the audience so of course Kristen Stewart won.


I know, Tahar, I was baffled she won as well (especially over Carey and you...)


The wonderful Peter Capaldi presented Best Animated Feature Film which obviously went to "Up"
Isn't it strange that "The Secret of Kells" was snubbed in its own homeland? (I mean the UK not England obviously...)
Seeing Capaldi made me want to puke when I remembered he was snubbed for Best Supporting Actor when Alec Baldwin got in of all people...


Penélope Cruz wasn't nominated for anything, "Nine" got one nod and so did "Broken Embraces". Watching her light up the screen when Foreign Language Film was presented made me wonder why are the Brits so enamored with Audrey Tautou's one note performances?
If I'm not mistaken she was nominated for "Amélie" where she's not all that, the movie yes, her performance meh and now she got in Best Actress for the dull "Coco Before Chanel" when Cruz for example was soooo marvelous in "Broken Embraces".
Assuming of course that they just wanted the foreign language factor...if not they could've nominated Katie Jarvis, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Abbie Cornish etc.


"A Prophet" won Best Foreign Language Film and the brilliant Jacques Audiard brought his posse to receive the award, The woman translated his speech while the adorable Tahar Rahim smiled in the background.


It was no surprise to see Kathryn Bigelow win Best Director for "The Hurt Locker". She of course looked fantastic and in her great speech encouraged people never to abandon "the need to find a resolution for peace".


When Kate Winslet came out to present Best Actress I was taken aback by how magnificent she looked.
Remember last year when she looked so constipated at every awards show (with the straight gowns in dull colors and severe hairdos)? This time she seemed floaty as she handed out the award to Colin Firth.


The sadly underrated actor made a great speech and confessed he almost said no to the part but never emailed director Tom Ford that answer because a repairman came over just as he was about to hit send.


The incomparable Ford looked proud and a million kinds of handsome as Firth compared meeting him as being "resuscitated" and advised the audience "don't ever press send and have your fridges repaired".


The awesome Mickey Rourke messed up his teleprompter lines and got one of the funniest jokes from the host who said he was sure Mickey hadn't been back home since winning the BAFTA in 09.


The undervalued Carey Mulligan finally won an award and looking breathtaking she confessed she hadn't expected to win (who can blame her with the preposterous way she's been treated in all these awards?).
"I wish I could make this speech like Colin firth and talk about fridges" she said completely ignorant of the fact that she was making my heart melt.


When Best Film came it was a bit stunning to see "The Hurt Locker" win the big one (especially when BAFTA is so nationalist) but it was a choice you really can't argue with, the win made sense after the show ended though...(read below).


While most shows are done with once the big award is handed out, BAFTA made us wait while Prince William and Uma Thurman (gotta LOVE those presenting pairs they come up with!) presented the legendary Vanessa Redgrave with an Academy Fellowship.


Redgrave was visibly moved as she went on telling stories about her childhood and told things she learned about Maria Callas (without the opera legend's knowledge).
She also made a penis joke and wrapped the whole thing up with a beautiful ode to the constantly changing medium of film.

Watching Redgrave appear onstage was glorious (especially when paired with a roaring standing ovation) and made me want to strangulate the people who moved the Honorary Oscars to a private dinner!
Shouldn't movies also be about preserving the great ones? Do we have to enjoy having the "Twilight" kids imposed on us while people like Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall get little sideshows?
Tisk tisk tisk AMPAS, BAFTA kicked your ass on this one.

Now back to "The Hurt Locker", just when I was thinking no film had won big, the announcer showed us the awards that had been presented earlier (BBC tape delayed this) and I was astounded to realize that "The Hurt Locker"'s tally had come down to:

• Best Film
• Best Director
• Best Original Screenplay
• Best Cinematography
• Best Editing
• Best Sound

it only lost two awards! "Avatar" got exactly that number of trophies but so did "The Young Victoria"...

I'm hoping this bodes well for Bigelow's masterpiece in two weeks, if not I can always use the snob card and say I prefer the Brits.
Wouldn't you?

While Watching the European Film Awards...

For those who think the Golden Globes are awkward, the European Film Awards' ceremony would result in the strangest beast of them all.
I had never seen them until yesterday afternoon and while the European Academy hasn't gained the worldwide recognition the Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals have, they have been doing some remarkable work for the past two decades.
Their picks in any year make AMPAS look like they're rewarding high school productions, alas still nothing in the world compares to the glitz and glamor of Oscar so let's move on...
These are things that caught my eye about the ceremony:


Danny Boyle, who's still collecting awards for "Slumdog Millionaire" looked so confused the whole evening!
I mean it's understandable when the ceremony has no real official language-there were speeches in at least four different languages, with no subtitles-and Boyle seemed like he didn't even know when they were talking to him.
When "Slumdog" won People's Choice, he was applauding excitedly until someone pointed out to him that he should be onstage accepting the award...

David Kross, who was nominated for Best Actor in "The Reader" embodied that sort of effortless, I-hate-you-for-it sexiness that people in our continent work so hard to achieve.

Kate Winslet won Best Actress for "The Reader" and since she wasn't there, director Stephen Daldry accepted on her behalf.
I hate when nominees don't attend ceremonies. The Actress category featured Winslet, Penélope Cruz and Charlotte Gainsbourg, none of whom attended. Even the host made a joke out of it pointing out how they were such terrific actresses they could even play invisible women.

The weirdest part of the whole thing was how instead of an orchestra they featured a band called Bauhouse who used film clips, music and words to create completely new musical pieces.
The campiest of them all featured Marlene Dietrich, with whom they created a trip-hoppy, oddly sexy piece of post modernist music.
This use of classics: sacrilege or genius?

Isabelle Huppert got a World Cinema Award and upon starting her speech and wondering what language to speak in she declared "cinema is the language of Europe".
She's perfection!

David Kross, and his iPhone, looked so good...

Look at the nominees for Best Director! Michael Haneke won for "The White Ribbon", but just wow!

The Europeans are not afraid to show explicit stuff on TV. They even go for full frontal in the clips featuring the nominees.
Can you imagine that ever happening at Oscar?
The FCC would implode!

Anthony Dod Mantle who won Best Cinematographer for "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Antichrist", wasn't in the ceremony and sent a weird taped speech.
However after the clip ended, they still went ahead and called Danny Boyle to accept the award for him. Danny of course had no idea what was going on...

Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" swept the awards. Gotta love the look on the presenters' faces as they obviously don't understand his speech.

When AMPAS fears anything Sean Penn has to say (tape delay was invented just for him) the EFA's went ahead and featured a commercial starring him!
It didn't happen during a break, they actually announced they would air a commercial in the middle of the ceremony and gave path to Penn's World Food Program ad which criticizes the bail outs and the Iraq invasion openly.
Then they proceeded to cheer it.

Why aren't all screenwriters as handsome as this one?

See what I mean about Kross?

Michael Haneke accepting the award for Best Film.
I really can't wait to see "The White Ribbon".