S.K.o.S.

Just found out that there's a theatre here showing A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night! I was planning to force myself to sit through Mr. Turner tonight, which is a 2.5 hour biopic about a 17th century British painter. Instead I get to watch an Iranian movie about a girl who rides a skateboard and is a vampire! Ohhhhh yeah!

I briefly noticed that it wasn't a real baby, and pretty much thought "Oh well". At the time, I was much more focused on Kyle and his wife and what they were saying. Same sort of thing when Kyle fires a bullet in a climactic scene and it's clearly CGI - I noticed it, and thought "Oh well". However, someone put up a clip of a large chunk of one of the scenes with the doll on YouTube (looks like it's been taken down now, though) and when you're just looking at the doll, it's hilarious. Cooper surreptitiously jiggles the doll's arm with his thumb at one point to make it look alive.

You know who we have to blame for that part? http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/making-american-sniper-how-an-760963

The big question is where the script would come from. Letters From Iwo Jima was based on non-fiction books about WWII by Japanese authors. It's way too soon for us to have anything written by Iraqis and accepted by Americans.

Ok. I would have said Anderson as the second weakest nominee too, but I didn't think other people necessarily would. Anyway, American Sniper was a good time, but I've seen enough valid non-political criticisms (PTSD too easily resolved, climactic scene was a mess with the sandstorm, fake plastic baby, sheep/wolves/sheepdogs scene that got laughs in my theatre) that I'm fine with Eastwood not getting a nomination.

The field for Best Director was fairly strong, but not enough to omit Eastwood or Ava DuVernay, IMO. Who do you take out from the nominees after Tyldum?

Watched a little past halfway before having to go to sleep (Hero vs. Delaney was where I shut it down). Surprised there isn't more talk about it. I was looking in the general discussion thread. I'm a little curious how they got it to work out so that no wrestler appeared more than once. It made for a good mix of styles, but some feds must not have been able to put up their first choice of match. There are a lot of "big name vs. lesser known name" matches...

Has anyone ever thrown 4 interceptions in a playoff game and won it before today? I found something that says QBs who throw five interceptions in a playoff game are 0-11.

I unexpectedly adored Foxcatcher. It'll probably be in my top 3, possibly even #1. The knock on it seems to be that it's a slow movie, but I was right with it the whole way. I wish Carrell had looked slightly less like an alien - and they insisted in shooting him in profile, to emphasize that nose - but the performance was great. He does this thing where he swallows mid-sentence where there shouldn't be a pause, like he's never fully sure about what he's saying, and him being uncomfortable makes the audience uncomfortable. Liked the idea that Mark Schultz (played by Tatum) lives very simply despite being a gold medalist, which seems a little sad, but later on you realize that he's so driven precisely because he doesn't have any of the trappings of success, and when you start throwing money at him, he loses his motivation.

And they snubbed Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. Apparently it was on the shortlist, so it was eligible.

No best foreign film nomination for Force Majeure, wow. Full list is in the spoiler:

I know very little about this movie but I think the answer's yes? It's playing in 9 theatres here right now in the Toronto area, and I'd think that any kind of North American theatrical release suggests that there'll be a North American DVD at some point.

Despite the fantastic reviews, I recommend avoiding Winter Sleep. That thing needed to be cut down to like an 80 minute movie.

I've seen pushback from some people on that movie along the lines of "Jazz is supposed to be about finesse and creativity, not brute force." Unfortunately, those people are dumb. Like I get that you don't become, for example, great at painting by doing 50 paintings a day until your hands bleed from holding the paintbrush. But if there's ANY discipline at all that requires you to put in that level of effort, and there is, then the movie is worthwhile.

I've been looking through "best of 2014" lists on the web as a guide to what I've missed seeing. Just wanted to mention that my goal is to watch the five mentioned in the quote before the end of February, plus the following: The Blue Room Code Black Dear White People Kill The Messenger Listen Up Philip Love Is Strange Miss Julie Mr. Turner A Most Violent Year Night Moves Norte: The End of History Obvious Child Stand Clear Of The Closing Doors We Are The Best! Wild A few of those will just be released on dvd in late February, so there'll have to be some last minute scrambling. Also, Norte is going to take some work to get through - it's four hours long.

I've seen Citizenfour, Life Itself and Kill Team (which I loved, but I saw it back in like the spring of 2013, so for it to be up for consideration now is a pleasant surprise). Certainly a lot of the other titles on there are familiar though.

Someone can correct me if this is wrong, but what I'm seeing is that since the filmmakers don't officially acknowledge that it's based on the book, it still qualifies as original.

I have to leave my car outdoors during the workday. On Monday and Tuesday it was cold. On both those days, when I got back to my car, the lock on the drivers' side was frozen (meaning I could put the key in the lock but couldn't turn it) but I was able to get in through the passenger side, probably because the sun was hitting that side of the car during the day. Today it's the coldest it's been all week. Apparently the easiest way to open your car if your locks are frozen is to heat up your key. So I'm going to buy a cigarette lighter just in case.

Here are three that I liked a lot. More to come. Clouds of Sils Maria - Plot is that a famous actress, who made her name starring in a play where a younger woman seduces an older woman, is asked to return to a production of the play - but she'll now be playing the older woman, opposite a young celebrity actress with a wild reputation. The genius here is that Juliette Binoche is playing the actress, and Kristin Stewart plays her assistant (with Chloe Grace Moretz playing the younger actress). Stewart opposite Binoche is stunt casting, but it works so well. I almost couldn't process them doing scenes together early on, to the point where I had trouble focusing on the actual dialogue, but in the end I bought them as BFFs (though their relationship is more complex than "BFFs"). Seeing them doing line readings together is a hell of a thing, though, and Binoche choking on her beer while Stewart attempts to explain the character motivations in a superhero movie put a huge smile on my face. First time I'd actually seen Stewart in a big role, and if she ever actually was a bad actress, then she must be getting better now. The whole arthouse vs. TMZ theme and the idea that we perceive art and life differently with more experience is a conversation-starter too. The Drop - Based on the script alone, I'll grant you that this is "only" a very good movie, not an exceptional one. But strictly from the perspective of creating a completely new persona, Tom Hardy gives the performance of the year here with his simple Brooklyn bartender, even better than Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (and Gyllenhaal playing a sociopath is a much more natural fit than Hardy playing this character). Compare Hardy in Locke to what he does here. It's like two completely different people. Matthias Schoenaerts' psycho ex-con character, also totally different than what he was doing in Rust And Bone, is the icing on the cake. Then they go head-to-head against one another... it was just a complete delight. Stretch - Patrick Wilson plays a limo driver who needs a bunch of money by the end of the day to pay off gambling debts. Chris Pine chews absolutely all of the scenery as an insane coked-up billionaire, and Ed Helms shows up every 15 minutes or so as the ghost of a dead limo driver to make discouraging comments. This is kind of like Crank, but with the volume at 6 instead of 10, more of a nighttime neon-tinged feel, and with Wilson as the relatable everyman in an crazy situation. Also features a couple of fun cameos from celebrities playing themselves. Thought it was a really good time.

Whiplash unexpectedly finds itself in the Best Adapted Screenplay category rather than Best Original. http://deadline.com/2015/01/academy-and-wga-at-odds-over-acclaimed-whiplash-screenplay-will-it-hurt-oscar-chances-1201341846/# It might not be a bad thing - the competition in Best Adapted is arguably easier (Gone Girl, Theory of Everything, Imitation Game in Adapted vs. some subset of Boyhood, Birdman, Grand Budapest Hotel, Selma, Mr. Turner, Nightcrawler, Foxcatcher in Original).

Just for the record, this is eligible for 'The Best of 2014' poll! It is? IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and Wikipedia all list it for 2013. Rotten Tomatoes lists it as 2014, and that's the one that counts for the poll.

It's very high on my 2014 list, and I've seen at least one person acknowledge that it wasn't the absolute scariest movie while at the same time calling it one of the best of the year. Also it's making some mainstream critics' top ten lists, which is very rare for a horror movie. I may be pointing out the obvious here, but the Babadook is meant to represent depression or mental illness. It completely takes over your life, the mother ends up in a zombie-like state in front of the tv for a good chunk of the second half of the movie, and there's the "you can't get rid of the Babadook" idea where you can't ever cure mental illness, you can only learn how to cope with it. A movie with some level of subtext and relating to real-world problems is going to score points with critics. I also thought the special effects were a big plus, and "special effects" might not be the right term to use, but it felt like a real feast of sight and sound to me in spite of the fact that most of the big scenes take place in a dark house. Stuff like where they have a wide shot of the mother across the room from the kid, and she's looking directly into the camera, which is creepy enough, but then she sort of floats forward at us, getting closer without actually moving her feet. There was just a lot of creativity. Lastly I think it's also getting points for its almost complete lack of jump scares. Your spoiler about Taking of Deborah Logan (which I haven't seen) is a little ironic, because it was a similar moment in The Babadook that chilled me the most (that imagined news report on the tv).

For best current Canadian director, two more names that should be in the conversation are Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) and Xavier Dolan (nothing really mainstream, but he won an award at Cannes this year).

Taking out everything from 2013 and 2014 eliminates everything I watched from like mid-July onwards. Here's a top ten, though. 10. The Secret Lives Of Dentists (2003) 9. Manic (2003) 8. A Lonely Place To Die (2011) 7. Videodrome (1982) 6. In My Skin (2002) 5. The Man On The Train (2003) 4. Lake Mungo (2009) 3. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) 2. Fargo (1996) 1. Psycho (1960)

Was doing some end-of-year cramming this month, and I've seen close to eighty movies under that criteria. It's been a very good movie year for me. And I still haven't seen 2 Days 1 Night, American Sniper, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Selma, etc... Right now, I've got a rough list of 21 movies that I'd vote for. By the end of February, I might end up having to cut some off to make a list of 30 (not complaining though). Will do some pimping before the end of the week.