TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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I Am Link

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--- Pyle Up - We were just crowing about this the other day - we take every chance we can get - so we were very happy to see one of our longtime favorite scene-stealers Missi Pyle got some much deserved love over at The Film Experience yesterday for her hysterical performance in Spring Breakdown, a truly underrated little comedy. "It's never gonna warm you up." Classic.

--- Get So Schizo - I've been saving my first viewing of Steven Soderbergh's supposedly psychotically strange Schizopolis for a rainy day, so I am setting aside this post by Glenn as Stale Popcorn on the film and ten of its greatest moments for the day after that rainy day when I'll inevitably want to read about the movie.

--- 25 of 11 - If I started listing the parts of this list of Joe Reid's 25 Movie Moments of 2011 that I loved I would list... twenty, I had to go and count and yup, I would be listing twenty of his list. So just go read his list and save me the nonsensical business of just repeating nearly the whole thing. It's so smile inducing.

--- More Like Lex Loser - Hmm, I wonder what JA thinks about the news that Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Lex Luthor in McG's Superman movie? Could he consider it the biggest bullet dodged in the history of bullets? Could he consider the fact that we're getting Michael effing Shannon as general Zod to be approximately one billion times a better thing? Hmm, I wonder.

--- Deadites Walking - Just because it isn't a true week in time without some new random nothing from somebody associated with the Evil Dead remake, here's a couple of quotes from the lead actress on how gory and scary their version will be - she manages to display a devastating incomprehension of the Sam Raimi films at the same time - plus a little bit from Bruce Campbell too, because he's always yapping on Twitter, bless him.

--- Say Yes To The Mess - Have you guys seen the international poster for the third [REC] movie? (via) I think it's been around for a bit but I hadn't seen it until yesterday and I love it. That's it there to the left. A wedding dress dragged through gore is just a delight, innit? I hope this one lives up to the first two. I love them so. BD's got a gallery with some new pictures from the movie too.

--- A To Zombie - I saw The Ford Brothers' 2010 zombie movie The Dead about a week ago and I really want to write something up when I can, but this week's got its distractions. The movie's well worth seeing though, so seek it out. It just got released onto DVD last week, and Netflix has it. All that said go read Pax's review at Billy Loves Stu, he'll sell you better than I just did.

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I Am Link

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--- Pyle Up - We were just crowing about this the other day - we take every chance we can get - so we were very happy to see one of our longtime favorite scene-stealers Missi Pyle got some much deserved love over at The Film Experience yesterday for her hysterical performance in Spring Breakdown, a truly underrated little comedy. "It's never gonna warm you up." Classic.

--- Get So Schizo - I've been saving my first viewing of Steven Soderbergh's supposedly psychotically strange Schizopolis for a rainy day, so I am setting aside this post by Glenn as Stale Popcorn on the film and ten of its greatest moments for the day after that rainy day when I'll inevitably want to read about the movie.

--- 25 of 11 - If I started listing the parts of this list of Joe Reid's 25 Movie Moments of 2011 that I loved I would list... twenty, I had to go and count and yup, I would be listing twenty of his list. So just go read his list and save me the nonsensical business of just repeating nearly the whole thing. It's so smile inducing.

--- More Like Lex Loser - Hmm, I wonder what JA thinks about the news that Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Lex Luthor in McG's Superman movie? Could he consider it the biggest bullet dodged in the history of bullets? Could he consider the fact that we're getting Michael effing Shannon as general Zod to be approximately one billion times a better thing? Hmm, I wonder.

--- Deadites Walking - Just because it isn't a true week in time without some new random nothing from somebody associated with the Evil Dead remake, here's a couple of quotes from the lead actress on how gory and scary their version will be - she manages to display a devastating incomprehension of the Sam Raimi films at the same time - plus a little bit from Bruce Campbell too, because he's always yapping on Twitter, bless him.

--- Say Yes To The Mess - Have you guys seen the international poster for the third [REC] movie? (via) I think it's been around for a bit but I hadn't seen it until yesterday and I love it. That's it there to the left. A wedding dress dragged through gore is just a delight, innit? I hope this one lives up to the first two. I love them so. BD's got a gallery with some new pictures from the movie too.

--- A To Zombie - I saw The Ford Brothers' 2010 zombie movie The Dead about a week ago and I really want to write something up when I can, but this week's got its distractions. The movie's well worth seeing though, so seek it out. It just got released onto DVD last week, and Netflix has it. All that said go read Pax's review at Billy Loves Stu, he'll sell you better than I just did.

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I Am Link

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--- He's A Maniac - Every couple of days my mind drifts to the Alexandre Aja directed remake of the sleaze-filled 1980 slasher Maniac starring Elijah Wood and I'm all, "Wha?" So I read this piffle of an interview with one of the actresses in the film with curiosity. She's all, "I've never seen the original, but this is totally different!" and she says that Aja made all of her favorite horror movies of all time (???), so whatever, but still. Wha?

--- Southern Cabin - AICN runs through the films that are showing at this year's SXSW festival, which apparently includes Joss Whedon scripted Drew Goddard directed long long awaited The Cabin in the Woods, sigh, I want it. AICN has seen it already and says: 

"I feel very confident that this will be talked about for most of the year, especially when they see some of the wild imagery that Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have cooked up. One sequence - I won't spoil, but involves a bunch of elevators - made me want to stand up and applaud. It's a hell of a horror movie, and it's so much fun."

Sigh, I want it.

--- Sad News, Kate Winslet isn't going to be in Charlie Kaufman's movie Frank or Francis after all, boo. I missed that tidbit when they announced Paul Reubens (and Elizabeth Banks) were going to be in it, I guess. I just blocked it out, because it sucks!

--- Speaking of Charlie Kaufman things, Spike Jonze is working on a movie that isn't the Charlie Kaufman movie we thought he was making, says Slash. Jonze is gathering together a (awesome awesome) cast including Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Samantha Morton, and Carey Mulligan for a movie about a man that falls in love with a computer voice. What's confusing is that script of Charlie Kaufman's that Spike is also attached to doing is also supposed to star Mulligan and Phoenix. Maybe he will just make both movies simultaneously! It's been too long since I've had a Spike Jonze Joint in my life, having two would rule.

--- Thirteen Thirteen - Bryan Fuller's reboot of The Munsters is not going to be called The Munsters, but rather it will be called Mockingbird Lane, after their memorable address of 1313 et cetera. According to TV Line they are in the casting stage right now. 

--- Silent Dom - We told you about Motor City awhile back - it's that thriller that will star Dominic Cooper in which he is only supposed to have a single line of dialogue the whole running time. Well Oscar Nominee Gary Oldman (how nice to be able to say that) has just joined the thing as the bad guy. He makes a good bad guy!

--- Patience Is A Virtue, and I guess I am virtueless - I posted some shitty-quality screencaps from a clip of a trailer on Entertainment Tonight for The Hunger Games earlier, but I should have just waited because now the whole trailer's released in great quality over at Yahoo. I'm waiting until I get home tonight and can watch it properly to, uh, watch it properly.

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I Am Link

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--- He's A Maniac - Every couple of days my mind drifts to the Alexandre Aja directed remake of the sleaze-filled 1980 slasher Maniac starring Elijah Wood and I'm all, "Wha?" So I read this piffle of an interview with one of the actresses in the film with curiosity. She's all, "I've never seen the original, but this is totally different!" and she says that Aja made all of her favorite horror movies of all time (???), so whatever, but still. Wha?

--- Southern Cabin - AICN runs through the films that are showing at this year's SXSW festival, which apparently includes Joss Whedon scripted Drew Goddard directed long long awaited The Cabin in the Woods, sigh, I want it. AICN has seen it already and says: 

"I feel very confident that this will be talked about for most of the year, especially when they see some of the wild imagery that Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have cooked up. One sequence - I won't spoil, but involves a bunch of elevators - made me want to stand up and applaud. It's a hell of a horror movie, and it's so much fun."

Sigh, I want it.

--- Sad News, Kate Winslet isn't going to be in Charlie Kaufman's movie Frank or Francis after all, boo. I missed that tidbit when they announced Paul Reubens (and Elizabeth Banks) were going to be in it, I guess. I just blocked it out, because it sucks!

--- Speaking of Charlie Kaufman things, Spike Jonze is working on a movie that isn't the Charlie Kaufman movie we thought he was making, says Slash. Jonze is gathering together a (awesome awesome) cast including Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Samantha Morton, and Carey Mulligan for a movie about a man that falls in love with a computer voice. What's confusing is that script of Charlie Kaufman's that Spike is also attached to doing is also supposed to star Mulligan and Phoenix. Maybe he will just make both movies simultaneously! It's been too long since I've had a Spike Jonze Joint in my life, having two would rule.

--- Thirteen Thirteen - Bryan Fuller's reboot of The Munsters is not going to be called The Munsters, but rather it will be called Mockingbird Lane, after their memorable address of 1313 et cetera. According to TV Line they are in the casting stage right now. 

--- Silent Dom - We told you about Motor City awhile back - it's that thriller that will star Dominic Cooper in which he is only supposed to have a single line of dialogue the whole running time. Well Oscar Nominee Gary Oldman (how nice to be able to say that) has just joined the thing as the bad guy. He makes a good bad guy!

--- Patience Is A Virtue, and I guess I am virtueless - I posted some shitty-quality screencaps from a clip of a trailer on Entertainment Tonight for The Hunger Games earlier, but I should have just waited because now the whole trailer's released in great quality over at Yahoo. I'm waiting until I get home tonight and can watch it properly to, uh, watch it properly.

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Germs Totally Suck, Y'all

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If I had my camera with me I would just post a picture of the giant bottle of Purell I bought on my way to work this morning and leave that as my entire review of Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. It would speak the truth as I see it in absolute and succinct terms. But unfortunately I loaned my camera away this week - and sidenote, I feel so helpless without it! What if I bump into Jake Gyllenhaal again? Ahh! (And sidenote to that sidenote: didja hear I actually bumped into Jake this past weekend? I did! Spotting number three! - so I've got to try this whole "writing my thoughts out in words" thing again. Boo! Who wants that? 

Okay so... Contagion. Contagion pretty much gave me a full-on panic attack, and it's an unprofessional admission - although who the hell here's a professional anyway? - but the movie took me twice its running time to watch because I had to pause it every ten minutes or so and take a break. Not really the optimum way to view a movie, and Steven Soderbergh should probably slap me across the face with a single glove the next time we meet. But maybe he'd be impressed that his film had such an effect on me, and let it slide this time? because he should be. I certainly was impressed. 

When Haywire came out recently I threw a lot of love at it, and I maintain that love even though after I wrote that early review I read a bunch of other people's reviews that argued convincingly about its shortcomings, and the shortcomings in the current status of Soderbergh's mainstream-experimental filmmaking. Why yes indeed, his movies are cold and clinical and more concerned with messing with visual and aural and linear expectations than with necessarily devoting their cold heart and laser eyes to just telling a richly-told-on-all-levels story. At this point he's playing - he can get anybody he wants to show up for five seconds, why wouldn't he?

But oh such play! I could watch Steven Soderbergh play with a narrative for days. (I also expect to be able to watch Steven Soderbergh play with Matthew Bomer and Joe Manganiello in thongs for days as well, but that's for another set of days.) And as sleek and relentless as Contagion is, I found it surprisingly moving too. When you've got Kate Winslet tremulously greeting the on-set of those first few coughs while staring at her reflection or Marion Cotillard being confronted by the duplicity of her own government in the face of sick children, or Matt Damon finally breaking down after stumbling upon the last pictures of his dead wife, when you've got actors this good still being allowed to stand there and do their thing amongst all that sleek relentlessness, then I'm feeling the best of both worlds, personally.

Not that anybody should doubt my commitment to sleek relentlessness. As my undying love for Michael Haneke attests, I can tend to favor the impersonal touch. A Cinematic misanthropy can speak to me, I will admit. So Soderbergh works for me. His rhythms are first rate, and his eye is incontestable. And this movie wound me up into a frenzy of germ warfare. It felt authentic, a vérité I could hardly take. Take for instance the scene where Matt Damon and his daughter finally leave their house after a frightened period of mourning only to find the world outside collapsing into chaos - the way it builds, from the glimpse of a small fire to the looting and screaming and running (not to mention all all that horrible hacking), it's a dreadful showmanship I felt fortunate (and more than a little sick, blessedly) to be shown.
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Germs Totally Suck, Y'all

.
If I had my camera with me I would just post a picture of the giant bottle of Purell I bought on my way to work this morning and leave that as my entire review of Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. It would speak the truth as I see it in absolute and succinct terms. But unfortunately I loaned my camera away this week - and sidenote, I feel so helpless without it! What if I bump into Jake Gyllenhaal again? Ahh! (And sidenote to that sidenote: didja hear I actually bumped into Jake this past weekend? I did! Spotting number three! - so I've got to try this whole "writing my thoughts out in words" thing again. Boo! Who wants that? 

Okay so... Contagion. Contagion pretty much gave me a full-on panic attack, and it's an unprofessional admission - although who the hell here's a professional anyway? - but the movie took me twice its running time to watch because I had to pause it every ten minutes or so and take a break. Not really the optimum way to view a movie, and Steven Soderbergh should probably slap me across the face with a single glove the next time we meet. But maybe he'd be impressed that his film had such an effect on me, and let it slide this time? because he should be. I certainly was impressed. 

When Haywire came out recently I threw a lot of love at it, and I maintain that love even though after I wrote that early review I read a bunch of other people's reviews that argued convincingly about its shortcomings, and the shortcomings in the current status of Soderbergh's mainstream-experimental filmmaking. Why yes indeed, his movies are cold and clinical and more concerned with messing with visual and aural and linear expectations than with necessarily devoting their cold heart and laser eyes to just telling a richly-told-on-all-levels story. At this point he's playing - he can get anybody he wants to show up for five seconds, why wouldn't he?

But oh such play! I could watch Steven Soderbergh play with a narrative for days. (I also expect to be able to watch Steven Soderbergh play with Matthew Bomer and Joe Manganiello in thongs for days as well, but that's for another set of days.) And as sleek and relentless as Contagion is, I found it surprisingly moving too. When you've got Kate Winslet tremulously greeting the on-set of those first few coughs while staring at her reflection or Marion Cotillard being confronted by the duplicity of her own government in the face of sick children, or Matt Damon finally breaking down after stumbling upon the last pictures of his dead wife, when you've got actors this good still being allowed to stand there and do their thing amongst all that sleek relentlessness, then I'm feeling the best of both worlds, personally.

Not that anybody should doubt my commitment to sleek relentlessness. As my undying love for Michael Haneke attests, I can tend to favor the impersonal touch. A Cinematic misanthropy can speak to me, I will admit. So Soderbergh works for me. His rhythms are first rate, and his eye is incontestable. And this movie wound me up into a frenzy of germ warfare. It felt authentic, a vérité I could hardly take. Take for instance the scene where Matt Damon and his daughter finally leave their house after a frightened period of mourning only to find the world outside collapsing into chaos - the way it builds, from the glimpse of a small fire to the looting and screaming and running (not to mention all all that horrible hacking), it's a dreadful showmanship I felt fortunate (and more than a little sick, blessedly) to be shown.
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Charlie's Angels

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Hot news alert! Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener, two of the greatest actresses of a certain age, have joined the cast of Frank or Francis, Charlie Kaufman's next movie! This is the one that Kaufman wrote and is directing, not the one that he wrote that Spike Jonze is directing - both are supposedly in the works, ya know.

Frank or Francis is the "Hollywood satire" that already has Nicolas Cage and Kevin Kline and Steve Carell and Jack Black cast - I wrote a bunch about it at The Film Experience way back when, if you care or don't know all about it already.

The main thrust here is just Winslet and Keener in a Charlie Kaufman movie, hooray! As Slash points out they were both nominated for Oscars in roles in movies written by Kaufman before - Keener in Being John Malkovich and Winslet in Eternal Sunshine. They both should have won Oscars for those roles too, if you ask me. (You didn't.) Keener was also in Charlie's first directorial effort Synechdoche New York, aka the best movie of the past however many forever even years. Do you think this is my most anticipated movie ever? Do ya?
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Charlie's Angels

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Hot news alert! Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener, two of the greatest actresses of a certain age, have joined the cast of Frank or Francis, Charlie Kaufman's next movie! This is the one that Kaufman wrote and is directing, not the one that he wrote that Spike Jonze is directing - both are supposedly in the works, ya know.

Frank or Francis is the "Hollywood satire" that already has Nicolas Cage and Kevin Kline and Steve Carell and Jack Black cast - I wrote a bunch about it at The Film Experience way back when, if you care or don't know all about it already.

The main thrust here is just Winslet and Keener in a Charlie Kaufman movie, hooray! As Slash points out they were both nominated for Oscars in roles in movies written by Kaufman before - Keener in Being John Malkovich and Winslet in Eternal Sunshine. They both should have won Oscars for those roles too, if you ask me. (You didn't.) Keener was also in Charlie's first directorial effort Synechdoche New York, aka the best movie of the past however many forever even years. Do you think this is my most anticipated movie ever? Do ya?
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Three Quick Reviews

If I don't type up a couple thoughts on these movies I've seen in the past week right now, I probably never will. This is wholly off the cuff, and therefore probably going to be nonsense, but whatcha gonna do? Actually take the time to craft something thoughtful? Bah! Seriously though, if I had much to say on these I would, like I did with Haywire yesterday. But I don't. So I won't.

The Ides of March - Really exceptionally boring. Clooney seemed asleep in front of and behind the camera - I don't know why he made this movie except maybe he wanted to jerk off on the memory of Sidney Lumet. I guess he got to pretend he was running for office without any of the actual tough parts. There's more insight in a five minute Rachel Maddow monologue. The writing was occasionally plunge-out-my-eardrums-with-a-fork awful. Ryan Gosling's accent is all over the place, but he wears his suits well. (Shocker.) He didn't really seem to know who this character was he was playing, either. Nobody much felt like a person. Marisa Tomei maybe, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman was pretty good. 

Moneyball - Speaking of PSH being best in show, I loved every shot of his scowling baseball coach here, but I didn't like this movie either. I have no special love for stereotypically told "Sports Movies" with their routine telling of the old-as-time underdog tale but this movie seemed disingenuous to me in its attempts at being different just for different's sake. Something just rang really false about it all to me, like everybody involved was so actively engaged in carving off expectations that they forgot to make any of it involving, or interesting. Like with Ides of March, Moneyball never got me anywhere near giving a shit about any of these people and their ridiculous problems. Oh Brad Pitt was fine (I generally very much like watching him onscreen, even when he's clothed) and as a vehicle for him coasting along amiably it was fine but we live in a skewed universe where this can be considered the best anything. It's just slightly less obnoxious than Clooney's golden praise for his dull scattered work in The Descendants. Jonah Hill wore glasses, so I guess that was respectable of him? I don't even know.

Carnage - Of the three this is definitely my favorite, and I'm sure I'll find myself watching Carnage again someday, but it's by no means a homerun. As I said earlier this week I'm perfectly on board with Joe Reid's rankings of the performances - Kate Winslet walks away handily with best in show (Barf of the century!), while Jodie seems a little lost. I kept feeling like she was panic-stricken looking for a closet to lock herself in so she'd feel comfortable enough with her surroundings to get her bearings. Although you figure this is, generally speaking, another "trapped in an enclosed space" sort of movie for her - too bad Jared Leto and his cornrows never swung through the window! I'd never seem the play, and I have to admit I was a little bit put off by the occasional facile misstep, but it is a tricky beast and I could see some of the off-notes working if the whole cast were a little bit tighter in step. Polanski does a good job working the space for all its worth - there must be five thousand camera set-ups in this thing, looking at these four people from every single angle there could ever be, keeping the single set feeling more dynamic than it could have.
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Three Quick Reviews

If I don't type up a couple thoughts on these movies I've seen in the past week right now, I probably never will. This is wholly off the cuff, and therefore probably going to be nonsense, but whatcha gonna do? Actually take the time to craft something thoughtful? Bah! Seriously though, if I had much to say on these I would, like I did with Haywire yesterday. But I don't. So I won't.

The Ides of March - Really exceptionally boring. Clooney seemed asleep in front of and behind the camera - I don't know why he made this movie except maybe he wanted to jerk off on the memory of Sidney Lumet. I guess he got to pretend he was running for office without any of the actual tough parts. There's more insight in a five minute Rachel Maddow monologue. The writing was occasionally plunge-out-my-eardrums-with-a-fork awful. Ryan Gosling's accent is all over the place, but he wears his suits well. (Shocker.) He didn't really seem to know who this character was he was playing, either. Nobody much felt like a person. Marisa Tomei maybe, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman was pretty good. 

Moneyball - Speaking of PSH being best in show, I loved every shot of his scowling baseball coach here, but I didn't like this movie either. I have no special love for stereotypically told "Sports Movies" with their routine telling of the old-as-time underdog tale but this movie seemed disingenuous to me in its attempts at being different just for different's sake. Something just rang really false about it all to me, like everybody involved was so actively engaged in carving off expectations that they forgot to make any of it involving, or interesting. Like with Ides of March, Moneyball never got me anywhere near giving a shit about any of these people and their ridiculous problems. Oh Brad Pitt was fine (I generally very much like watching him onscreen, even when he's clothed) and as a vehicle for him coasting along amiably it was fine but we live in a skewed universe where this can be considered the best anything. It's just slightly less obnoxious than Clooney's golden praise for his dull scattered work in The Descendants. Jonah Hill wore glasses, so I guess that was respectable of him? I don't even know.

Carnage - Of the three this is definitely my favorite, and I'm sure I'll find myself watching Carnage again someday, but it's by no means a homerun. As I said earlier this week I'm perfectly on board with Joe Reid's rankings of the performances - Kate Winslet walks away handily with best in show (Barf of the century!), while Jodie seems a little lost. I kept feeling like she was panic-stricken looking for a closet to lock herself in so she'd feel comfortable enough with her surroundings to get her bearings. Although you figure this is, generally speaking, another "trapped in an enclosed space" sort of movie for her - too bad Jared Leto and his cornrows never swung through the window! I'd never seem the play, and I have to admit I was a little bit put off by the occasional facile misstep, but it is a tricky beast and I could see some of the off-notes working if the whole cast were a little bit tighter in step. Polanski does a good job working the space for all its worth - there must be five thousand camera set-ups in this thing, looking at these four people from every single angle there could ever be, keeping the single set feeling more dynamic than it could have.
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