In Widescreen: David Fincher

Showing posts with label David Fincher. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Widescreen Awards: The Winners

And here they are: my favorite performances and technical achievements of the year. Click on the images for the full-write ups. The nominees are presented in list format at the bottom of this post with a slightly amended (including one addition and one upgrade) Top 20 from the one I started out with.

The Top Twenty Films of 2010

20. "Cairo Time" (Canada, dir. Ruba Nadda)

19. "Black Swan" (USA, dir. Darren Aronofsky)

18. "Toy Story 3" (USA, dir. Lee Unkrich)

17. "Salt" (USA, dir. Phillip Noyce)

16. “The Fighter” (USA, dir. David O. Russell)

15. "Inception" (USA, dir. Christopher Nolan)

14. "The Chaser" (South Korea, dir. Na Hong-jin)

13. "Night Catches Us" (USA, dir. Tanya Hamilton)

12. "True Grit" (USA, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

11. "Splice" (Canada, dir. Vincenzo Natali)

10. "I Am Love" (Italy, dir. Luca Guadagnino)

9. "Restrepo" (USA, dir. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger)

8. "Animal Kingdom" (Australia, dir. David Michôd)

7. "A Prophet" (France, dir. Jacques Audiard)

6. "That Evening Sun" (USA, dir. Scott Teems)

5. "Secret Sunshine" (South Korea, dir. Lee Chang-dong)

4. "Enter the Void" (France/Germany/Italy, dir. Gaspar Noé)

3. "Tokyo Sonata" (Japan, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

2. "Mother" (South Korea, dir. Bong Joon-ho)

1. "The Social Network" (USA, dir. David Fincher)

Best Director

Bong Joon-ho (Mother)

David Fincher (The Social Network)

Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata)

Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void)

Best Actor

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)

Hal Holbrook (That Evening Sun)

Teruyuki Kagawa (Tokyo Sonata)

Tahar Rahim (A Prophet)

Édgar Ramírez (Carlos)

Best Actress

Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine)

Kim Hye-ja (Mother)

Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)

Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Tilda Swinton (I Am Love)

Best Supporting Actor

Neils Arestrup (A Prophet)

Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank)

John Hawkes (Winter's Bone)

Ray McKinnon (That Evening Sun)

Best Supporting Actress

Melissa Leo (The Fighter)

Carrie Preston (That Evening Sun)

Charlotte Rampling (Life During Wartime)

Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

Best Ensemble Performance

Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Ciarán Hinds, Dylan Riley Snyder, Michael Lerner, Charlotte Rampling, Michael K. Williams, Paul Reubens, Rich Pecci (Life During Wartime)

Hal Holbrook, Raymond McKinnon, Carrie Preston, Mia Wasikowska, Walton Goggins, Barry Corbin, Dixie Carter (That Evening Sun)

Katie Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Griffiths (Fish Tank)

Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyôko Koizumi, Yû Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa and Kanji Tsuda (Tokyo Sonata)

Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Jamara Griffin, Wendell Pierce, Jamie Hector and Amari Cheatom (Night Catches Us)

Best Original Screenplay

Bong Joon-ho and Park Eun-kyo (Mother)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix and Sachiko Tanaka (Tokyo Sonata)

David Michôd (Animal Kingdom)

Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor (Splice)

Todd Solondz (Life During Wartime)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)

Peter Craig, Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard (The Town)

John Curran (The Killer Inside Me)

Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)

Scott Teems (That Evening Sun)

Best Cinematography

Jeff Cronenweth (The Social Network)

Benoît Debie (Enter the Void)

Hong Kyeong-pyo (Mother)

Yorick Le Saux (I Am Love)

Martin Ruhe (The American)

Best Editing

Stuart Baird and John Gilroy (Salt)

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (The Social Network)

Marc Boucrot and Gaspar Noé (Enter the Void)

Lee Smith (Inception)

Juliette Welfling (A Prophet)

Best Art Direction

Roshelle Berliner and Matteo De Cosmo (Life During Wartime)

Thérèse DePrez, David Stein and Tora Peterson (Black Swan)

Guy Dyas, Frank Walsh and Larry Dias (Agora)

Jess Gonchor, Christina Ann Wilson and Nancy Haigh (True Grit)

Albrecht Konrad, David Scheunemann and Bernhard Henrich (The Ghost Writer)

Best Musical Score

John Adams (I Am Love)

Lee Byung-woo (Mother)

Clint Mansell (Black Swan)

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network)

Hans Zimmer (Inception)

Best Sound Design

~ Enter the Void
~ Inception
~ The Social Network

Best Visual Effects

~ Enter the Void
~ Inception
~ The Social Network

Monday, February 14, 2011

Widescreen Awards: Director

For the second time in his relatively short career, Bong Joon-ho has taken a familiar genre and crafted a masterpiece (the other being 2005's serial killer drama "Memories of Murder"). Everything that he could possibly get right with Mother, he gets right. He even makes watching spilled water creep across the floor suspenseful. Bong is successful at balancing all the ingredients of his Hitchcockian stew — including truly funny character detail and a heartbreaking mother-son relationship — together for one of the most satisfying and unsettling films of 2010.

More than any film this year, The Social Network feels like it was conceived as one perfect whole. That's due in no small part to David Fincher. Many of his films have been flawlessly executed. Here, you can sense Fincher's fingerprints over every inch of film stock (or megapixel); and that's a good thing. It's one thing to have ratatattat dialogue (courtesy Aaron Sorkin); it's another to translate that into good cinema. All the while, Fincher holds onto the human element inside his story. It's not just about the birth of a new social network, but the new generation of people supporting that network.

Before I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino was a virtual unknown. As best I can tell, none of his previous films and documentaries have received U.S. distribution. Therefore, it's impossible to tell what he brought to the table previously, but "I Am Love" feels like the opening scene in a long and fruitful career. It's so full of life and vitality, and Guadagnino manages to extract natural performances from his actors while surrounding them in a preternaturally beautiful world.

Known foremost for his horror films ("Cure," "Pulse" and 2006's chilling "Retribution"), Kiyoshi Kurosawa has created one of the warmest, most rewarding films of the year with Tokyo Sonata. He's out-Capra'd Capra, but his happy ending is modulated by all the confusion and suffering that came before it. It's the kind of morality tale that only a horror director could conjure. And it works mostly because of how real the family at its center feels. The performances are so uniformly good that, by the time the melodrama kicks into high gear, the audience is too invested to question the strangeness of the film's final act. Finally, Kurosawa gets extra points for the piano recital, which sums up the point of the story with no words.

Eight years after his reprehensible (but awe-inspiring) "Irreversible," Gaspar Noé has returned to do the same thing all over again. This time, however, he (thankfully) upped the humanity quotient. Noé is a cinematic wizard. With Enter the Void, he stretches the bounds of what's possible in film while telling a captivating story. The audience is thrown into the worlds of both the living and the dead; and, like its main character, the viewer has no road map.

Honorable mention to Lee Chang-dong for the subtle beauty and compassion of Secret Sunshine; David Michôd for assembling an unexpectedly complex crime family in Animal Kingdom; and Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger for putting their camera and their audience in the middle of the fight for Korengal Valley in Restrepo.

Tomorrow look for the Widescreen Awards wrap-up, with the winners announcement and links to some of the great films available on Netflix Instant.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Top 20 Films of 2010

With the year well and truly put to rest and Oscar nominations a scant day away, now is as good a time as any to count down what I saw as the best the cinema had to offer in 2010.

First, a note on inclusiveness. As ravenously as I devour films — by my count I watched 61 last year — it's simply impossible to see them all.

I tend to avoid films I know will be horrendously bad. A high school English teacher once told me life is too short to read bad books, and I believe the same applies to the movies. My "bottom 10" list would probably include innocuously mediocre fare such as "Shutter Island" and "Ondine," as well as absurdly entertaining stuff like the South Korean disaster epic "Tidal Wave." I have no qualms about recommending any of those films to the right person in the right mood to enjoy them. (FYI: "Tidal Wave" is available on Instant Netflix. Check it out.)

Because I don't live in an urban area, there are a lot of films each year that are impossible to find. If I would have had to hop a flight out to L.A. to see the movie, it's not going to show up here. I am, after all, a broke print journalist of the ol' Chevrolet Set.

But that also means films that were seen by the tastemakers last year — and one from as far back as 2007 — are fair game. Similarly, I don't exclude direct-to-video releases or documentaries. If the film fired the right synapses, it doesn't matter how it was created or where I saw it.

In brief, 2010 presented an embarrassment of riches, ranging from surprising summer blockbusters ("Inception," "Salt") to homegrown indies ("Night Catches Us", "That Evening Sun") and what very well may be the crest of the Korean New Wave. I'm not sure if any such movement actually exists in real life, but that country has presented a plethora of talented directors in the past decade, from almost-household-names Bong Joon-ho ("Memories of Murder," "The Host" and lastyear's "Mother") and Park Chan-wook ("Oldboy") to rising workmen Lee Chang-dong (last year's "Secret Sunshine" and the forthcoming "Poetry") and Kim Ji-woon ("A Tale of Two Sisters").

Before launching into the cream of the crop, here are some honorable mentions that just missed the cut: "The American" (USA, dir. Anton Corbijn); "Carlos" (France/Germany, dir. Olivier Assayas); "Fish Tank" (UK, dir. Andrea Arnold); "Life During Wartime" (USA, dir. Todd Solondz); and "The Town" (USA, dir. Ben Affleck).