Monthly Archives: December 2017

The Detroit Film Critics Love Florida and James Franco!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, the Detroit Film Critics Society announced that they had selected Sean Baker’s The Florida Project as the best film of 2017!

You can check out their nominees here and the winners below:

Best Film: The Florida Project

Best Director: Sean Baker, The Florida Project

Best Actor: James Franco, The Disaster Artist

Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Supporting Actor: Willem DaFoe, The Florida Project

Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Best Ensemble: The Post

Breakthrough: Jordan Peele, Get Out

Best Screenplay: Martin McDonagh, Three Billboard Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Documentary: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

Best Animated Feature: The LEGO Batman Movie

Best Use of Music: Baby Driver

Here Are The AFI’s Top 10 Films of 2017!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Big Sick

Yesterday, the American Film Institute named their picks for the 10 best films of 2017!

Traditionally, the AFI has been a pretty good precursor of what’s going to actually be nominated for best picture.  Usually, with one or two exceptions, the AFI Top Ten closely mirrors that best picture lineup.

(For the record, in 2016, Lion and Hidden Figures received Best Picture nominations, despite being snubbed by the AFI.  Brooklyn and The Revenant pulled it off in 2015 and, in 2014, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Theory of Everything were snubbed by AFI but were still nominated for best picture.)

So, what does that mean for 2017?  Well, it’s very good news for The Big Sick, Wonder Woman, and Get Out, all of which are genres that have traditionally struggled to get best picture nominations.  It’s also potentially bad news for both Mudbound and Darkest Hour, neither of which made the AFI’s list.

  • “The Big Sick”
  • “Call Me By Your Name”
  • “Dunkirk”
  • “The Florida Project”
  • “Get Out”
  • “Lady Bird”
  • “The Post”
  • “The Shape of Water”
  • “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri”
  • “Wonder Woman”

Here Are The 15 Semi-Finalists For The Best Documentary Oscar!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, the Academy announced the 15 semi-finalists for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.

I’ve seen quite  a few documentaries this year but I haven’t seen any of the films listed below.  Quite a few of them are on Netflix.  Abacus: Small Enough to Jail can be found on YouTube.  I have a feeling that An Inconvenient Sequel will win, just because Al Gore will probably trash Trump during his acceptance speech.

Anyway, here are the semi-finalists:

Abacus: Small Enough TO Jail,

Chasing Coral,

City of Ghosts,

Ex Libris — The New York Public Library,

Faces Places,

Human Flow,

Icarus,

An Inconvenient Sequel,

Jane,

LA 92,

Last Man in Aleppo,

Long Strange Trip,

One Of Us,

Strong Island,

Unrest

 

The Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Get In With Get Out!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics announced their picks for the best of 2017!  After picking up awards from many of the other precursors, Get Out has finally been named best picture of the year.  While it’s always debatable how much weight these various groups carry with the Academy, Get Out can use all the help it can get to become one of the few horror films to ever receive a best picture nomination.

​Best Film
Call Me by Your Name
Dunkirk
Get Out – WINNER
Lady Bird
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Director
Guillermo del Toro – The Shape of Water
Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird
Christopher Nolan – Dunkirk – WINNER
Jordan Peele – Get Out
Dee Rees – Mudbound

Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread
James Franco – The Disaster Artist
Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out
Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour – WINNER

Best Actress
Sally Hawkins – The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri – WINNER
Margot Robbie – I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird
Meryl Streep – The Post

Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project
Armie Hammer – Call Me By Your Name
Jason Mitchell – Mudbound
Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri – WINNER
Michael Stuhlbarg – Call Me By Your Name

Best Supporting Actress
Mary J. Blige – Mudbound
Tiffany Haddish – Girls Trip
Holly Hunter – The Big Sick
Allison Janney – I, Tonya
Laurie Metcalf – Lady Bird – WINNER

Best Acting Ensemble
Dunkirk
It
Mudbound
The Post
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri – WINNER

Best Youth Performance
Dafne Keen – Logan
Sophia Lillis – It
Brooklynn Prince – The Florida Project – WINNER
Millicent Simmonds – Wonderstruck
Jacob Tremblay – Wonder

Best Voice Performance
Will Arnett – The LEGO Batman Movie
Gael García Bernal – Coco
Michael Cera – The LEGO Batman Movie
Bradley Cooper – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Anthony Gonzalez – Coco – WINNER

Best Motion Capture Performance
Andy Serkis – War for the Planet of the Apes – WINNER
Dan Stevens – Beauty and the Beast
Steve Zahn – War for the Planet of the Apes
Taika Waititi – Thor: Ragnarok

Best Original Screenplay
Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani – The Big Sick
Jordan Peele – Get Out – WINNER
Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird
Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor – The Shape of Water

Best Adapted Screenplay
Hampton Fancher & Michael Green, Story by Hampton Fancher – Blade Runner 2049
James Ivory – Call Me by Your Name
Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber – The Disaster Artist
Aaron Sorkin – Molly’s Game
Virgil Williams and Dee Rees – Mudbound – WINNER

Best Animated Feature
The Breadwinner
Coco – WINNER
Despicable Me 3
The LEGO Batman Movie
Loving Vincent

Best Documentary
City of Ghosts
Faces Places
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Jane – WINNER
Step

Best Foreign Language Film
BPM (Beats Per Minute) – WINNER
First They Killed My Father
In the Fade
The Square
Thelma

Best Production Design
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049 – WINNER
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Wonder Woman

Best Cinematography
Roger A. Deakins – Blade Runner 2049 – WINNER
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom – Call Me by Your Name
Hoyte Van Hoytema – Dunkirk
Rachel Morrison – Mudbound
Dan Laustsen – The Shape of Water

Best Editing
Baby Driver – WINNER
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
Get Out
The Shape of Water

Best Original Score
Blade Runner 2049 – WINNER
Coco
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

The Joe Barber Award for Best Portrayal of Washington, DC:
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
Last Flag Flying
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
Spider-Man: Homecoming
The Post – WINNER

Music Video of the Day: Snow (2010, dir by Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I sit here writing up today’s music video of the day, the temperature outside is plunging.  When I woke up this morning, it was 40 degrees outside.  Tonight, it’s 33 degrees and getting colder.  This weather may not be good for my asthma but at least it finally feels like Christmas around here!  Best of all, it might snow tonight.  My plan is not to sleep tonight.  Instead, I’m going to sit in front of a window, write, and look for snow.

Living in Texas, I’m lucky if I get to see snow twice in one year.  It snowed back in January.  Didn’t last for long.  It looked something like this:

Photograph taken on January 8th, 2017 by Erin Nicole. This is what we consider to be a lot of snow in Texas. Stop laughing at us, Canada.

Anyway, Snow is not only what’s on my mind but it’s also the title of today’s music video of the day!  Snow was the first track off of The Chemical Brothers’ seventh studio album, Further.  All 8 of the tracks featured a video directed by Adam Smith and Marcus Lyall.  Snow‘s dreamlike video features Jenny Godding swimming.  Intentionally or not, it reminds me a good deal of Irene Miracle’s surrealistic swim in Dario Argento’s Inferno.

Jenny Godding is also featured on the cover of Further.

Enjoy!

A Movie A Day #332: Surviving The Game (1994, directed by Ernest R. Dickerson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jack Mason (Ice-T) has been living on the streets of Seattle ever since the death of his wife and daughter.  When Cole (Charles S. Dutton), the friendly man at the soup kitchen, tells Mason that he can get him a job, the suicidal Mason accepts.  It turns out that a group of wealthy men are going on a hunting trip and they need a guide to lead them through the wilderness.  Mason accepts but, upon arriving, he discovers that the men (who are played by Rutger Hauer, F. Murray Abraham, William McNamara, John C. McGinley, and, of course, Gary Busey) are actually planning on playing the most dangerous game and hunting him for the weekend.

There are definitely better versions out there of Richard Connell’s famous short story.  One of the best, John Woo’s Hard Target, was released a year before Surviving the Game.  Both films share the idea of rich men hunting down the homeless for fun.  Surprisingly, it is Woo’s film that seems to take the idea, with all of its societal implications, more seriously.  Surviving the Game may present Jack Mason as being a suicidal homeless man but there is never any doubt that he is actually Ice-T, everyone’s favorite rapper and all-around badass.  But it’s precisely because Ice-T has such a recognizable persona that Surviving the Game is a guilty pleasure.  There is never any doubt that Ice-T can survive the game because Ice-T is the fucking game.  Matching Ice-T every step of the way is a rogue’s gallery of recognizable character actors, all of whom bring a different type of crazy to the proceedings.  When a movie delivers the spectacle of Ice-T being hunted by and then hunting Gary Busey and Rutger Hauer, it is easy to forgive whatever plot holes might be present in the script.

One final note: Surviving the Game was directed by Ernest R. Dickerson.  Dickerson got his start of Spike Lee’s cinematographer so it’s not surprising that Surviving the Game looks great.

 

2017 Year In Review : Top 10 Single Issues

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

And so it’s that time of year again : let the debating begin, I suppose, as the various “Top 10” lists begin to hit the internet in earnest, but one thing I think we can all agree on — it’s been quite a year in the world of comics. The underground lost luminaries Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, the mainstream lost Swamp Thing co-creators Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson — there have been some tough moments.

But there have also been a number of “highs,” as well — in fact, one could make a fairly convincing argument that 2017 has seen more really fucking good comics published than any year in recent memory. To that end, then, we’re splitting this annual “best of” round-up into several columns, the basics of which will proceed as follows :

The top 10 graphic novels list will be pretty much exactly what it sounds…

View original post 1,526 more words

Music Video Of The Day: There’s A Beast And We All Feed It by Jake Bugg (2014, dir by Bob Harlow)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there!  Lisa here with today’s music video of the day!

Welcome to life on the Bayou!

This video is for a song by Jake Bugg.  It’s called There’s A Beast and We All Feed It.  One reason I like this song is because it’s only 99 seconds long, which is perfect for my miniscule attention span.  Despite the short running time, this video manages to include just about everything that you might expect to find living on the bayou.  Alligators.  Shoplifting.  Guns.  Drugs.  Dogs.  Bizarre religious rituals.  They’re all here.

I have admit that one reason why I like this video is because I “know” all of these people.  When I was growing up, my family lived all over the country.  We spent time in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado, and, of course, Texas.  Even though I’m happy to have escaped it, I still know the world in which this video is set.

The song itself is a Dylanesque attack on conformity.  Check out the lyrics:

They grin but they don’t mean it
They sing but they don’t feel it
They’re gone but they don’t see it
They can call but they can’t heed it
They think but they don’t speak it
There’s a beast eating every bit of beauty
And they all feed it
Stop a moment, try to freeze it
Find and they don’t seek it
At the bar but they can’t meet it
Try their best but they can’t beat it
Nice car, somebody keys it
There’s a beast easting every bit of beauty
And yes they feed it
Not a finger pointer
I will not cry your name
For yeah brothers and sisters
We are one ‘n’ the same
But when my sister suffers
And when my mother cries
All I want to do
Is look in someone’s eyes and say
You sleep but you don’t dream it
You’re sly but you don’t seem it
You’re busy as a flea pit
You struggle to perceive it
Is it hard to believe it
There’s a beast eating every bit of beauty
And yes you feed it
I’m not a finger pointer
I will not cry your name
For yeah brothers and sisters
We are one ‘n’ the same
But when my sister suffers
I have my mothers job
All I want to do
Is look in someone’s eyes and say
Somehow we’d better speak it
We’re scared someone will tweet it
It’s on the wall but you won’t read it
It’s gone before you see it
We all dread to repeat it
There’s a beast eating every bit of beauty
And yes we all feed it

Anyway, enjoy!