• Searching for meaning in Robert Downey Jr’s Stark-esque Globes beard. Perhaps too much meaning. [CHUD]
• Roger Ebert dives back into the enigma of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.” [Chicago Sun-Times]
• Stretching to compare “Avatar” to “Slumdog Millionaire” because of it’s “out of the blue” success. [24 Frames]
Okay, so I wasn’t expecting “Wolf Creek” to be the most popular inclusion — though in putting it out there, I was glad to see the number of fellow cheerleaders I have for that one. Such sharing is the principal joy of doing such lists.
I doubt that any titles in today’s group of ten are quite as contentious, though one received a far rougher ride from some major critics upon release than I think it deserved, and has rather disappeared from view in recent years. Keen-eyed readers will also notice my list’s first overlap with Kris’s best-of-decade collective — ironically, on a film that tends to divide opinion rather than unite it.
Several of you have asked, in comments and via email, about the films that would fill out my Top 100. I thought 50 films more than enough for me to write up, but since some readers are treating the project as the kind of playlist I had hoped for, I could be persuaded to offer an alphabetical, titles-only list of the also-rans.
The list continues after the cut.
• Kris boldly offered some early winner predictions … I (and you) followed.
• AMPAS unveiled the official list of 20 animated feature contenders, guaranteeing five eventual nominees.
• This week’s Off the Carpet column picked through the leading Best Supporting Actor contenders.
• In The Long Shot, we reflected on a handful of the Academy’s better moves this past decade.
I’m not sure why the British broadsheets are all falling over themselves to publish their ‘best of the 2000s’ lists in early November, but mere days after The Telegraph critics declared Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” the film of the decade, The Times has weighed in with their own Top 100.
In their list, a different Michael comes out on top: Haneke’s cryptic and rather brilliant 2005 thriller “Caché” (or “Hidden,” if you prefer), which only came in at #44 on the Telegraph list, is their pick of the last 10 years. (Has that threat of a Ron Howard remake gone away yet?) I must say, I’m happier with that choice than the Moore film, which doesn’t even feature on The Times list.
That said, the lists’ objectives are different: The Telegraph aimed to gather the most significant films of the decade, disregarding aesthetic worth in some cases, while The Times has gone for a blunter ‘best films’ claim. Both lists are equally contentious and sometimes silly, as such group-think collectives tend to be. (“Team America” in the top 10 is an obvious attention-seeking ploy, but what of the British bias that places “Casino Royale” and “The Queen” similarly high?)
(More, and the Times Top 20, after the cut.)
London Film Festival
With apologies to Pete Townshend, the kids are most certainly not alright.
Such is the message we seem to be gleaning from the cinema of 2009, as a vast range of unrelated titles – “Precious,” “Coraline,” “Dogtooth,” “Antichrist,” “Fish Tank,” even “An Education” – appear united in visiting the physical and/or psychological damage wrought upon children by either obliviously or maliciously neglectful parents, in some cases planting the seeds of trauma for further generations.
No film this year, however, addresses the matter with more thematic exactitude and near-scientific scrutiny than Michael Haneke’s grimly riveting “The White Ribbon,” a film which differs from the ones previously mentioned by taking an entire community, as opposed to a solitary family, as its allegorical subject. More expansive in its focus than any previous Haneke work, it nonetheless surprises with the intimacy of its gaze and the social responsibility of its treatise.
Eternally fascinated by human behaviour, yet never a director much associated with the humane – his trademark chilliness reaching new heights (or depths, if you prefer) with last year’s “Funny Games” remake, which treated its papery characters with even more diagrammatic dispassion than the 1997 original – Haneke finally marries these two approaches here, empathizing with its considerable ensemble of characters even as it dissects them.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Germany has selected Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” (trailer here) as their official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. No foreign-language Palme d’Or winner has failed to be entered in the race since Japan’s “The Eel” in 1997, and “The White Ribbon” has both breathless critical acclaim and a recognizable auteur name going for it.
Still, the severe arthouse work remains an adventurous choice for Germany, given that Haneke’s icy formalism hardly sits very comfortably in the Academy’s wheelhouse.
The Austrian filmmaker has previously had four of his films submitted for Oscar consideration by his home country, each time failing to make the Academy’s grade: most recently, 2005 critical darling “Caché” was controversially disqualified for not being in the submitting country’s own language. (The resulting outcry prompted a revision of the rules.)
In trying to disentangle the order of Martin Scorsese’s upcoming projects (in the wake of this week’s news that the master is taking on Sinatra), AwardsDaily’s Ryan Adams takes a peek at the range of titles that IMDB Pro lists on the director’s slate.
I am mistrustful of IMDB’s information at the best of times, particularly with a director like Scorsese who seems to nurture multiple projects indefinitely. (For how many years has “Silence” been in the conversation, after all?) But I was intrigued and a little puzzled to see an optioned property titled “Cache” at the head of the list, with a projected date of 2011.
Is this the long-mooted American remake Michael Haneke’s 2005 masterpiece, or is it unrelated? (There’s no accent aigu on the title, after all.) Can anyone enlighten me? I remember recoiling in horror when Ron Howard was mentioned in connection with the project a few years ago. Scorsese is obviously a step up, but a remake — by anyone — of Haneke’s very idiosyncratic film still strikes me as a dicey prospect, given how rooted it is in a very specific historical and political context.