Up sweeps the first Screenies Awards.
Donald Clarke
No more Cone of Shame for you, Dug.
Eager for displacement activity from real work, your host finally got round to scrolling down the comments on the best-of the-year post and assembling a readers’ top 10 for 2009. The rules were simple: I counted one vote for every positive comment made about a film. There was — somewhat surprisingly — just the one tie in the lower reaches and, benign dictator that I am, I used my casting vote to separate the two candidates. Here we go…
10. The Wrestler
9. A Serious Man
8. In the Loop
7. Anvil: The Story of Anvil
6. District 9
5. Inglourious Basterds
4. Moon
3. The Hurt Locker
2. Let the Right One In
1. Up.
The results confirm how very wise contributors to this “blog” are. Seven of the top 10 appeared in my own list and only one failed to make my “bubbling under” codicil. The one that got away, In the Loop, got four stars from me on release and could very easily have snuck into the lower reaches of the Screenwriter Ten. Hell, you could write this “blog” yourselves.
A few further points worth noting: the post was set up very shortly after A Serious Man was released, so its true position may be a place or so higher. Also, though I wasn’t convinced by Where the Wild Things Are, that picture may, I suspect, have picked up a few votes if it had emerged earlier. Then there’s Avatar and Nine. I am not yet allowed to reveal my opinions of either, but a couple of votes may, perhaps, have drifted that way too. It’s also worth considering that there were nearly as many negative comments about Inglourious Basterds as there were raves. Quentin’s flick thus wins the 2009 Marmite Award for the film you either love or hate.
At any rate, none of this is to take away from Pixar’s achievement with Up. The best animated feature Oscar the studio will (barring a miracle) pick up for the picture may mean more to them than this inaugural Screeny, but, in the era before Pixar emerged, it would have been hard to imagine any animated feature winning such an informal poll in The Irish Times. Pinocchio in 1940? Not, I think, over His Girl Friday, Rebecca, The Philadelphia Story and The Grapes of Wrath. I can’t imagine Bambi would have beaten Casablanca and The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942.
Anyway, it looks as if it will be a long time before John Lasseter and his crew will be forced to wear the Cone of Shame. Up, up and away.
I’m wondering if the response to Where The Wild Things Are is divided along cultural lines. Whilst generally praised in the US it is perhaps not doing so well this side of the Atlantic. It was pretty roundly panned by the Newsnight Review panel tonight (a panel that included children’s author Anthony Horowitz) although that same group generally loved Fantastic Mr. Fox. Perhaps it’s the less is more theory and, to shamefully generalise, today’s Americans require emotions and feelings to be articulated whilst us Europeans are content to have them merely alluded to. Just a thought. I haven’t seen it yet so shouldn’t really comment.
Well, it seems weird for me to say go and see a film I didn’t like, but I think it’s definitely an interesting failure. It does sometimes happen that there’s a complete divide in reviews between America and the UK and Ireland. Benjamin Button is a case in point: very well reviewed in the US, largely hammered in these parts.
I’m going to wait until WTWTA comes out on video, which might be soon but I reckon the boy actor Max Records is at the start of a great career. Hope he’s better directed next time.
Whatever about winning a poll, I think Pinocchio and Bambi hold up pretty well against their live-action peers.
And I wonder if the creation of the Best Animated Film Oscar was to head off precisely that dreaded scenario. Anyway, if The Lord of the Rings (or Driving Miss Daisy) can win Best Picture then it’s game on…
More than Pixar’s latest — and not because they’re better — I think that Fantastic Mr Fox and WTWTA have shown that the divide between animated and ‘real’ film to be bogus.
Stop-Motion and Muppet technology respectively make these films look different to computer-animated flicks, but while they’re both broadly in the same category they have much more in common with Amerindy confections like Little Miss Sunshine than Monsters Inc.
In fact the weaknesses of FMF and WTWTA are to do with their resemblance to The Royal Tannenbaums or Eternal Sunshine. (I know, I know, in the case of Mr Jonze I could have said Being John Malkovich or Jackass, but I decided to split the difference.)
So while Mr Anderson’s Fox picture looks impressive, it’s only fair to say it’s a terrible story, a poor adaptation and a smug film. And Mr Jonze’s WTWTA is a beautifully realized production with lapses in narrative and logic, but which has heart and a gorgeous central performance.
Having seen both with our children, I would have to say that the Fox is a picture for children which fails to satisfy either generation, while the Wolf is one which feels true to parents and kids in different ways and which provokes a much more interesting response.
can’t argue with anything on the list, i’ve really enjoyed this year in terms of movies. there was even a couple of good rom coms(adventureland, 500 days of summer)
‘a serious man’ was fantastic although i tried to explain the movie to someone and i made it sound like the most boring movie ever.
sci fi came back in a big way with moon and district 9(both of which i loved) and some movie that is out next week i think.
hurt locker was my was fav movie of the year , high tension all the way through and the pace never dropped
I’m a little surprised at the lack of love for Milk. Was it released here just a bit too far back to remain in people’s minds? (Although didn’t The Wrestler come out around the same time?)
Hey Noise. Milk was just one vote short of the final ten, but, yes, you’re right. Films released here in January or February — particularly those that figure in the Oscars — often register as last year’s flicks. I think Slumdog Millionaire — though I thought it only okay — would have got many more votes if people realised it came out here in 2009 (first week of the year in fact).
I forgot that Slumdog Millionaire was in 2009. I would have definitely mentioned it otherwise. I surprised to see that you didn’t enjoy it Donald.
http://artyfactsblog.blogspot.com/search?q=slumdog
Your review is very interesting and it made me rethink some aspects of the film, but overall I think you were quite unfair.
Some of the coincidences you identified can be explained away. (Other then Jamal learning the answers to the questions in chronological order at key points in his life, but hey, it was narratively useful.)
I think the transition from a realistic gritty western style film to a Bollywood style fairytale was deliberate and very novel; rather then an accidental and insensitive mangling of two styles as you seemed to suggest.
And although the causes of poverty or other political issues don’t feature, Slumdog at least depicts the the children as having an agency and voice of their own. The cultural differences in knowledge between classes are taken seriously in the conversations between Jamal and his torturer, and thankfully no well meaning white person comes and saves everybody. Westerners are appropriately shown as naive and of periphery importance, occasional popping into the lives of the characters. This is an impressive feat for a western movie set in the third world; where the opposite is usually the case. On balance I think the movie was quite culturally sensitive.
Wow. Wow Wow! Hang on a moment, Brian.
This…
http://artyfactsblog.blogspot.com/search?q=slumdog
is not me. For a start, he has hair. He also does not — as Alan Clark said dismissively of Ken Clarke — take the suburban “e”. And he’s 53.
For the record, I did quite like Slumdog Millionaire, but I wasn’t blown away by it. I thought some parts of it — the vilains; the fat American tourists — were just a little too broad. But I certainly didn’t hate it.